


Only If You Want To

by Violetwilson



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens (2015)
Genre: Angst, Eventual Happy Ending, F/M, criminals, did i mention they're criminals, everyone's awful at flirting except Poe, like what is Ren's actual job tho, ren's bad at pet names, rey's got low blood sugar like the whole fic, slowburn
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-10-30
Updated: 2018-06-07
Packaged: 2019-01-26 12:11:56
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 19
Words: 111,643
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12557112
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Violetwilson/pseuds/Violetwilson
Summary: Personal security expert (and occasional under-the-table hitman) Kylo Ren has a strong feeling about the cute dive bar waitress with the strange bruises and the vicious wit.She's either a victim or the weirdest criminal he's ever met. Possibly both. And yeah, maybe his hands aren't the cleanest, but damn if he isn't tying to help. Now if he could only get her to put down the switchblade...





	1. The Dive

**Chapter 1. The Dive.**

Poe’s nuts if he thinks Ren’s ever coming back to this fucking dive bar ever again. He’d been all fun and games two hours ago at his house over a case of beers. “You never get out! C’mon, don’t stay alone in the office, it’s bad for your health,” Poe had said. And, stupidly, he’d thought it might be a good idea to get a break from work. Loosen up a bit. Check out that weird dive bar at the edge of the city that Poe and Finn are always going on about, an authentic biker bar in Mountain Spring with a patio, live music, and a weekly pool tournament with drinks for prizes.

“Plus, it’s Saturday,” he’d pointed out. And Ren’s an idiot so he agreed to go.

But now that they’re here and three beers and one burger in, and he’s already regretting it. The bar has a low ceiling and possibly the entire town of Mountain Springs contained in its walls, and every inch of the wall space is covered in western themed knick-knacks and nailed up dollar bills. The place is long and narrow, with a low bar lining the back wall and tables crowded in the corners. Low lights hang _just_ barely above his head height, and he knows he’s going to run into one of them if he so much as stretches. Plus, there’s only two ways in or out, at the front and far back of the restaurant, so from a security perspective, it’s a total nightmare.

Poe is chatting up the wait staff in that easy, charming way he has that has gotten them access to about fifteen secured locations in the course of their work. He has no idea where Finn is, but he’s probably beating some poor sap at pool. And Ren’s just sitting here, staring at his beer and thinking about work. Again.

Poe reappears at his side suddenly and grabs his arm in a way that would get almost any other guy else punched in the face.

“Finn’s about to beat some dude at pool, c’mon, we’re running back up,” he says, practically jumping out of his skin with excitement. Christ, if Ren has to pull Poe out of a fight he’s going to kill him.

He rises to his feet, crossing the room to the pool table where Finn is, indeed, beating a beefy looking guy at pool. Ren’s eyes flit to the chalk scoreboard on the wall behind the table, and he guesses that this must be the reigning pool champ of Thursday night pool championship. Davey Muscles, his leather jacket reads. Finn is, as always, way over his head and holding his own at the center of the enormous crowd of people around the ratty pool table. His leather jacket has the First Order logo on it, which might have done something to intimidate a more urban crowd familiar with their organization, but has apparently done nothing to calm the seething crowd around them. Ren leans against a concrete pillar and waits.

The game is nearly over, and the whole crowd has that expectant, faintly hysterical vibe of people waiting for a fight to start.

Ren watches Finn’s opponent carefully. He hasn’t missed the discrete Third Reich insignia on the dude’s upper arm. Silence falls over the pool hall as Finn takes his aim on the last ball on the table. It’s a tough shot, but if he sinks it then he wins by default. Davey Muscles looks on, a look of barely contained rage on his bloated features. Fucking doped up roid rager, he thinks. The Vegas market is flooded with tainted product that has every idiot with half a brain thinking they’re invincible.

Ren sees Poe clenching and unclenching his fist, his eyes trained on the game and practically chomping at the bit.

Finn lines his cue up, straightens, and lets the cue fly at the ball. It’s a perfect shot, and the clack of the pool ball against the black ball is almost immediately followed by an uproarious cheer as the ball sinks home, securing a victory for Finn.

Poe runs up to Finn, pulling him into bear hug and slapping him on the back as cheers and shouts fill the small, poorly lit space. Ren’s got his eye on the loser, who is, predictably, furious. Finn and Poe’s show of brotherly friendship (though who the fuck knows with those two) isn’t helping their prejudiced opponent calm his tits.

Finn’s turning, that good natured smile on his face, as Dave reaches for something under his vest. Ren makes an executive decision about how the next thirty seconds are going to play out. Calmly, he walks over and punches him hard and fast in the gut, hiding the motion behind the mass of his body as he sends the guy stumbling backwards until he crashes into the pool table. Ren stands cool and unaffected, feigning ignorance. The crowd quiets, confused at the sudden development as Davey groans on the table.

Ren keeps his voice low and calm over the sudden hush. “Nobody likes a sore loser.”

A deadly hush as the guy starts to sit up, red faced and angling for a fight.

Poe’s jovial tones cut through the tension. “Someone get that man a beer,” he calls, pointing at Davey. It does the trick, and suddenly the crowd is laughing and clapping again in a drunken mash of goodwill. Someone gives the defeated player a hand up and Poe calls for a round for Finn, too, and the moment passes.

Yeah, definitely not a night on the Strip. Ren returns to his seat, Finn and Poe close behind as they resume their place at the sticky table they’ve taken in the corner. People instinctively give their table about a foot of breathing room, despite the crowds.

“Nice game,” Ren says, taking a drag on his lukewarm beer. Finn grins.

“Asshole had it coming. You saw his tattoo?”

Poe’s eyebrows raise at Ren. “Yeah but was the punch really necessary?”

“Yes,” Ren says in a deadpan. It’s enough for them, and they nod, accepting his direction.

“You were crushing it out there,” Poe says. “You gotta teach us how to play.”  
“What, and give away my secrets? Not fucking likely.”

“I’m getting you another beer,” Poe declares, waving his hand at the tall blonde woman at the bar and pointing significantly at Finn as he holds up two fingers and mouths _PLEASE._

Finn glances at his watch. “I think Rey’s shift has started by now. I’m going to go find her.”

He pushes away from the table and into the crowd. Ren raises an eyebrow at Finn’s back as he pushes through the crowd. “Who’s Rey?”

“Night shift waitress. She’s a friend,” Poe says.

Ren follows Finn’s movement through the crush of bodies and the roar of music as he heads to the bar. One of the advantages of being so fucking tall is that he can see clear across any room, which, in their line of work, comes in handy. Finn leans over, talking to the tall blonde woman with a side cut. She gestures towards the back and Finn nods.

“I didn’t think we had friends,” Ren drawls as Finn pushes his way back.

Poe smirks. “Maybe you don’t, you gloomy bastard.”

“Can’t help it if everyone within a fifty mile radius of this town is horrible,” he mutters.

“Not Rey. Oh, shit, there she comes,” Poe says, leaning forward.

Ren’s eyes narrow in search of this Rey person. He’s guessing she’s the small, mousy girl trailing in Finn’s wake. Finn pushes through and then the girl’s right in front of him, giving Poe a smile.

“Hey,” she says. She’s got a soft voice and a no-nonsense set to her brows. The light is bad, but her eyes are a hazel color and she has freckles. She looks slight, maybe even sick or something. He frowns.

Poe ruffles her hair and she swats his hand away good-naturedly. She hasn’t met his eyes and he finds himself faintly pissed off about that. No one in their right mind ignores a guy like him.

Poe says, “This is Ren. He thinks he’s our boss, but really we just hire him to scare off the riff-raff.”

Ren nods his head at Rey. But when he meets her eyes, she’s glaring at him. Really glaring at him, every line of her body set in a tense defensive stance. There’s muscle to her, he realizes. And fury, apparently. What he could have done is beyond him, so he looks blandly back.

“Hey,” she says icily.                                                                  

Finn frowns. “Hey, Poe was kidding. Ren’s not actually our body guard.”

Her glare doesn’t falter for an inch. “Right. What can I get you?” she asks, taking out a notebook and turning back to Poe.

Poe looks surprised. “You’re waiting tables tonight?”

“Tap’s malfunctioning and Phas is the only one who can get it to work, so we swapped for the night.”

“Can we get some onion rings and another pitcher?” Poe asks.

“You hate waiting tables,” Finn points out.

She gives him a half smile. “Less than I hate being unemployed. You guys on a job tonight?”

Ren glares at Poe for how much he’s evidently shared with this girl, but Poe just shakes his head. “Nah. We just finished one.”

“Nice. Well, really, I should get back too it. Holler if you need something.”

She turns and disappears back into the crowd. Just another lost soul on the edge of Sin City. But he’d seen something there- some flash of strong emotion buried under that layer of control. He has a vague urge to chase after her and demand she spill her life’s story to him. But he’s not a fucking sociopath, so he doesn’t. Instead, he turns to Finn and Poe.

“Awfully chatty with the waitstaff,” he says coolly.

“We come here all the time,” Poe counters breezily. “And you would know that if you ever got your head out of your ass and did something besides looming around the house like a vampire.”

Poe suddenly flinches and Ren knows that Finn has just kicked him under the table.

He’s not offended. Poe’s probably right. So he just says, “Just be careful of who you tell what to.”

Finn nods. “Rey doesn’t know anything, really. She thinks we’re property developers.”

Ren grins at the idea. “Why’d you tell her that?”

“We can’t really tell her we hurt people for money on the side, can we?” he mutters.

Poe laughs. “You should some time, I’d like to see her face.”

Ren cracks a grin and is immediately punched good naturedly in the arm by Poe. In an instant Rey is back, carrying two pitchers and two baskets of onion rings over her head to get them clear of the press of bodies. Poe stands and intercepts, helping her with her armload even though she seems to be perfectly capable of managing on her own.

“Here you are,” she says crisply, setting down a steaming plate of onion rings. “Freshly made. I won’t let them use any of that frozen bullshit on my friends.”

“You’re an angel,” Poe says, taking a bite of the onion ring and moaning in pleasure.

“Are you working next week?” Poe asks, pouring them all a beer. Rey averts her gaze, fumbling with the black half apron around her waist like she’s looking for something.

“I’m not sure. Why?” she says.

All his life, Ren has made a business of guessing when someone is about to run. Tracking people, tracking leads, finding information, extracting what he needs. These are his skills and he’s proud of them. But in the figure of their cute waitress, he sees that familiar nervous, restless energy of a person on the edge. They all look the same. They all look like Rey. Just less… beautiful, typically.

Poe says, “Karaoke night on Tuesday.”

Her eyes widen. “Oh no, that’s still happening?”

Poe beams. “We talked to Phasma. She said she’d bring it back.”

“Poe you didn’t,” she scolds.

Ren leans forward. “What’s wrong with Karaoke?”

Her eyes flit up to his for half a second before she looks away again. “Nothing,” she says. Finn’s eyes narrow, but he doesn’t say anything.  
“It’s only the funniest night of the month,” Poe explains. “You get a free shot for every song you do, so as the night goes on everyone just gets drunker and drunker and the music gets worse and worse.”

“So can you go?” Finn asks.

Rey squirms. “Sadly, yes, I am working that night,” Rey admits, though he can tell she doesn’t really want to say it.

“Then we will _be_ there!” Finn cheers, and several people look over. They know better than to come over, and Ren’s grateful. He’d like to keep his evening as violence free as possible, especially since he’s decided that punching Nazis is more an act of public service than actual violence.

Rey rolls her eyes just a little, tucking a loose strand of hair behind her ear. “Okay, okay,” she concedes. Then her eyes brighten. “Oh, Poe, I have your tire pressure gauge.”

“Rey, that was a gift!” Poe protests. But she’s already dumping out the contents of her pockets onto the table. There’s a handful of hair ties, a cell phone, bus stubs, and, yes, the silver tire pressure gauge that’s usually clipped to the side of Poe’s Triumph.

She hands it to him, smiling. “Thank you for letting me borrow it.”

“It wasn’t a loan, but, okay. How’re your bike’s tires?”

Ren’s eyebrows rise. “You ride?”

She gives him another one of those icy glares. “I have a _bicycle_. I was worried it had a leak.” She turns back to Poe. “It was fine, by the way.”

Finn grins. “I told you that you were being paranoid.”

She shrugs fluidly, stuffing her items in her pocket again. “You can never be too careful.”

Ren barks out a laugh, thinking of the way they all live. Rey doesn’t even look over this time.

“I should get back to it,” she says, straightening her apron and giving Finn and Poe a grin. It pisses him off that she won’t look at him. He wants those eyes on him.

“See you around!” Finn calls as she pushes back through the crowd to the bar.

Finn snorts. “She does _not_ like you.”

Ren shakes his head. “Lots of people don’t.”

“Yeah, but you didn’t really do anything, did you?” Poe muses.

“Maybe I look like her dad or something,” he mumbles, because, hey, who the fuck knows.

A few drinks later and Poe’s drunk as a lord with Finn close behind him. They’re going to have to take a taxi home at this point, but Ren’s been playing it slow and steady. Last thing he wants is to leave his bike at a dive bar like this. In the corner of his eye he sees that waitress, Rey, threading through the crowd with more beers in her hands. She’s agile, neatly dodging about five people who step in her way in the press of Saturday night revelry. He hasn’t seen her so much as spill a drop, which would be impressive even if she weren’t doing the whole thing with a picture perfect smile on her face.

He calls bullshit.

Poe flags her down and she presses over to them, looking harried. But then he can’t see her anymore because Poe’s pulling her into a drunken bear hug and rocking her from side to side like a child. Finn howls with laughter and Ren looks away, deciding that it’s about time to call it a night.

He pulls out a phone and sets an Uber pickup for them in ten minutes. They already owe him for last time, but they don't usually drink like this. He can spot them. Shit, he’s got the money. He pays the bill.

A stray light from the disco ball makes something on the table flash and he looks up just in time to see Rey’s cell phone on the table. She must’ve forgotten it. It’s one of those old fashioned plastic ones that you can prepay on. He flips it open out of what he tells himself is just an idle curiosity and finds the battery is totally dead, which is a pity, since he’s got a mind to look through it and see if she’s hiding anything interesting.

He glances over to where Rey has somehow managed to disentangle herself from Finn and Poe, who have started a room wide chant for her immediate return. The whole place is just chanting her name over and over again.

Phasma’s voice cuts across the crowd. “Rey’s shift is over! She left, you bastards!”

Ren glances down at Rey’s cell phone. It’s 1am. He turns it over in his hands, his eyes flicking to the door that leads out back, where the staff park. He figures she might still be there and stands, walking to her car or something. He gets to his feet to do what he does best: investigate a suspicious person.

His gamble pays off. There’s an open area out back, set apart from the patio with its Christmas lights and firepit, and the desert is dark as pitch for miles and miles around them. The sky above is starry and beautiful, though Vegas is sending out a bleary, toxic glow near the horizon.

She’s standing in the cool desert air, digging around frantically in her pockets with her back to him. Something fetid wafts out from a dumpster, and he feels suddenly pissed off that they’re both standing in this shitty bar in this shitty desert. He shouldn’t have come here.

“Lose something?” he says, holding up the phone. She turns around and her eyes flash. For a second he sees an unmistakable spark of total fear in her eyes. It’s so strong and immediate that he takes a step back, instinctively giving her more space. He realizes that she’s a lone woman and he’s this hulking stranger who’s cornering her outside. Fuck. Not the impression he was going for.

“You left it on our table,” he offers, trying to pitch his tone in a non-threatening way, whatever the fuck that sounds like. There’s a first time for everything.

“When were you going to tell me that?” she snaps, but the fear is fading from her expression and he can see that she’s relieved now, just marginally less frosty.

“I just did,” he growls. Christ.

“What do you want for it?” she hedges, eyes narrowing.

“Nothing,” he says emphatically. “I just brought it for you. It was underneath Finn’s onion rings.” He takes a step towards her, holding the thing out in front of him like she’s a wild animal he’s trying to bribe with food. She takes a few steps forward and snatches it from his palm.

“Christ,” he grumbles. “I didn’t take it from you on purpose.”

“Forgive me if I’m not all that trusting,” she snaps. “I saw what you did to Dave. That was completely uncalled for.”

He blinks. She’d seen that? He’d been so fast, so careful. “Did you also see the SS tattoo on his upper arm? He was reaching for a gun. Guy’s a skinhead. I didn't think he’d take too kindly to Finn beating him. Punching him like the lesser of two evils.”

She eyes him warily and he just stands there, letting her work out whatever fucking issue is going on with her. Finally, she relaxes, just slightly.

“I didn’t know that. About Dave,” she says, looking down at her phone and then back up to his face like she’s scared he’ll try and pull something while she’s not looking. He shoves his hands in his pockets and tries to look non-threatening.

“Apparently. And I’m sure Poe wanted you to keep that gauge,” he adds, because he’s not really sure what to say now that they’re talking.

“He’s not driving home?” she says, dodging his implied question. Ren shakes his head.

“Uber will be here in 10.” And then, because he’s an idiot who never fucking learns, he asks, “You need a lift?”

The garish yellow alley lights throw her face into dramatic relief, and he can see the hollows of her cheeks and the dark circles around her eyes. She looks like she needs a square meal. Maybe a hug.

She shakes her head. “No. Thanks though.”

It’s the nicest thing she’s said to him all night. “Alright.”

A pause. The desert is _loud_ around them, all chirping and calling and rustling. It’s unsettling.

“Why’d you give me such a big tip?” she says, her tone suspicious again.

The answer comes to him from out of nowhere. _Because you’re cute and vulnerable and I want to take you away from here._

What he actually says is, “For putting up with Finn and Poe.”

“I was so rude to you,” she says, and it comes out like an accusation.

“You thought I punched your friend,” he growls, shrugging.

She nods, and the movement moves the thin canvas jacket she’s wearing just slightly. Just enough to expose a quick flash of silver tucked into a pocket inside the coat. He’d know a switchblade anywhere, though he’s never seen anybody use one outside of a Broadway musical. Who the fuck is this girl?

“Where are you from?” he asks.

“Nowhere. I’m nobody,” she declares, lifting her chin as if daring him to correct her. In this lighting, he can see the freckles on her face, her bitten nails, the dark circles under her eyes. Rey doesn’t get much sleep, that much is clear. But he doesn’t take the bait.

“Right, Rey from nowhere, I’m Kylo Ren,” he murmurs, extending a hand like they’re having a friendly little chat instead of a weird conversation next to a dumpster in the middle of a desert. He takes a few steps forward and it feels right to come closer to her. She doesn’t back away from him this time and takes his hand with less hesitation than he’d been expecting. Her grip is warm and steady, her hands small in his. He feels hyperaware of her, like someone has thrown a spotlight on her face and everything else has receded into shadow. She withdraws it too quickly for his taste, wrapping her coat around her more firmly. They just stand there for a second, looking at each other warily.

Fuck that. He needs to get to know her more.

“Look, let me walk you to your-”

“Goodnight,” she says abruptly. “Thanks.”

Then she turns around and walks away from him so quickly that he doesn’t even have time to react. She just strides purposefully away until she’s around the corner and headed to wherever her car’s parked. She shouldn’t be out here walking alone. She shouldn’t be out here at all. And what the fuck was her deal, giving him all that attitude when he was just being fucking _nice_? Still. Those big eyes of hers. That little smile. Fuck. This is going to be an issue.

He debates catching her, demanding to know what the fuck her problem is, insisting that she let him see her personally to her car. Hell, he’d like to have her on his bike and take her home himself. It’s dark as shit and nobody in this town is up to any good past one in the morning.

“Until next time, Rey,” he murmurs. The night air slowly steals all the heat from his body as she walks away into the night.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hello! Welcome to a story! I've written most of this out ahead of time, minus a few scenes and some proof work, so expect updates on Sunday nights. 
> 
> CW: This story talks about abuse and violence in a semi-lighthearted way, but there is no sexual abuse discussed or alluded to. 
> 
> You can find extras, images, references, and Star Wars memes on  
> [my Tumblr.](https://violetwilson.tumblr.com/) But only if you want to.


	2. Drinking songs

**Chapter 2.** **Drinking songs.**

They do indeed go to karaoke night, and for once, Ren goes without being dragged. True to her word, Rey’s working that night.

_Fucking beautiful._

They go to a table in the front, ordering beers and burgers from Phasma, who is waiting tables again. They’ve gotten there earlier this time, and it’s a Thursday, so the bar is far less crowded. There are only a handful of people gathering before the singing starts, and it’s not long before Poe’s waving a bemused Rey over to their table by the makeshift stage dominating one corner of the bar. Low lights point directly at the stage, but Phasma hasn’t dimmed the house lights yet, giving the whole place a kind of weird, too-bright light.

Rey’s got her hair in some kind of complicated looking braid thing that goes down her back and sets off the hollows of her cheeks. Ren drinks in the sight of her, pleased beyond all measure that she’s here. She gives them all a smile, even him this time, and asks them how it’s going.

“We’re exhausted,” Poe says in a conspiratorial tone, leaning forward as Rey puts her hand on her hip. “Because Ren here has had us up late working on contracts.”

Ren shrugs, because it’s not untrue. “Someone’s gotta do them, and I have very important lurking to do.”

Poe snorts a laugh and Finn grins. “Ren looks like he’s all business but he’s not so bad.”

“He’s just _pretty_ bad,” Poe observes.

“What can I get you guys?” she asks, apparently deciding to move the conversation along. Fine by him, he’ll just have to get her alone later. So much the better.

“Sit with us!” Finn declares. “I haven’t seen you in forever and we need the company.”

Rey glances up at Phasma, the mostly empty bar, and then, just for a moment, over at him. Their eyes meet, which isn’t surprising since he’s been staring at her since they walked in, and it feels like he’s put a battery on his tongue. He sits up a little straighter. She nods, drawing up a chair.

“So, how’s the real estate business?” she asks. She’s wearing the same sweater she wore when he met her the first time.

“Booming,” Poe declares. “We’re up to our ears in work.”

“What’s your day to day like?” she asks, leaning forward on her elbows and resting her face on one hand. She looks easy, somehow. Less tense.

Finn says, “Hmm, well they’re all different. Ren gets the contracts and gives us our assignments for the day. We go to job sites and make sure everything’s working right.”

Poe scoffs. “Finn’s talking a big talk. He does the technical stuff. Ren and I are the ones going out getting our asses kicked all the time.”

Ren gives them both a look. Christ, they’re _never_ this chatty.

“It’s a busy line of work, especially this time of year when all the casino renovations are going on,” Ren interrupts. Poe raises a brow at him that he studiously ignores.

“But you drove all the way out here?” Rey asks, raising a brow and looking straight at him. She gives him the full force of her gaze, her head tilted to one side in a way that’s just the faintest bit skeptical. He has the distinct impression she’s sizing him up. It definitely shouldn’t be as attractive as it is. Rey’s actively hostile to him. And yet…

Finn grins. “We love it. You can’t let the bikes really rip in the city. Too many cops.”

“Are you guys Outlaws?” she says sharply, eyeing their jackets for patches.

“Fuck no,” Finn says. “Way too much work. We ride for pleasure.”

“And to get places,” Poe adds. “Like here.”

“You know, you should come by our place sometime,” Finn suggests. “We have these awesome parties at Ren’s house. The team’s really cool.”

“I would pay actual money to see you take on Hux,” Poe says, laughing.

“Who’s Hux?” she says, smiling a little. It doesn’t escape him in the least that she hasn’t answered the invitation.

“He’s our other boss, technically,” Finn says, but some of the humor leaves his eyes. Fucking work. Ren’s going to have to talk to Hux about being less of an asshole to Finn.

“And a gigantic ass,” Ren adds, giving Finn a half smile.

“Well, I’m sure you’d know all about that,” Rey says, looking right at him with a tiny smirk on her face. He can’t tell if she’s being mean or just teasing him. Why is it such a turn on when she does that?

He just smiles back at her, low and lazy. He knows the game she’s playing. He’s better at it than she is. Rey’s eyes narrow, but she doesn’t look mad, exactly. Just deep in thought as she sizes him up. He hasn’t felt this scrutinized in a long time, and the feeling isn’t entirely pleasant. He pushes his shoulders back and doesn’t look away. Finally, she flits her gaze back down to the table and a surge of irrational pleasure fills him. He’s not trying to be an asshole, but he’s also not about to pretend that her act fools him.

“But you work with him?” Rey says, and he doesn’t know if she’s talking about him or Hux.

“It’s sort of hard to explain,” Poe hedges.

“Right. Real estate stuff,” Rey says, nodding as if this is something she hears all the time.

“Will you sing tonight?” Poe asks, changing the subject.

Just then Phasma pops her head around the corner and calls for Rey to come back to the bar. Rey throws them all an apologetic smile and ends their little conversation, and Ren realizes that she’d said almost about herself nothing during the entire conversation.

X

Later, he leans against the bar Rey’s working at as she watches Poe and Finn sing cheerfully into the microphone with a fond smile on her pretty features. She pretends not to notice him staring at her as she rolls utensils into napkins for an admirable thirty seconds before she finally turns those brown eyes on him with a dry, “Hey.”

Then she looks back at the bins of loose silverware. The napkins are the paper kind that don’t do shit to wipe up spills, but her fingers move fast and careful across them. Lifting, rolling, setting. Precise, calculated movements.

“Will you make me a drink?” he murmurs.

Rey glances back up at him and her hands still, just for a second. Then she looks back at the napkins.

“Why? You look like the type of guy who’d just tell me all the ways I made it wrong,” she says, not angrily or critically. It’s like she’s talking about the weather. He snorts.

“Is kneejerk rudeness your default setting, or are you just that defensive?” he says.

Her eyes flash as she looks up at him and he sees a spark of something passionately, furiously alive in her. Just for a second. He’s seen it before, that spark. He likes it.

“You don’t know me,” she snaps.

“I’d like to,” he murmurs.

Her hands still. She seems to consider him. Then she sets the silverware she’s holding down with a clatter on the countertop and turns around. He stands, thinking she’s going to straight up walk away from him mid-conversation, which isn’t going to fucking happen, but he realizes she’s leaning down to grab something from a fridge under the counter. The back of her shirt rides up and he sees a flash of the smooth skin of her back. He wonders if she’s got freckles there, too, and what it would feel like to trace them with his fingers. He shifts in his seat as she rights herself and pours something into a glass.

Still frowning, she whirls around and hands him a glass of something amber colored over ice.

“Drink it,” she says pointedly.

“You haven’t poisoned it, have you?” he says dryly, reaching for the glass. He brushes his fingers across hers, just lightly as he takes the cup, and he sees her lips part before he pulls the glass away.

“What kind of murderer would I be if I told you I’d added poison just because you asked?” she murmurs. Her eyes follow his hand as he lifts the drink to his mouth. He laughs, appreciating the curve of her hip as she leans on the bar and stares challengingly up at him. But she’s teasing him. He can see it, and it fills him with satisfaction. Ren takes a drag of the drink and a bright, bubbly taste fills his mouth.

“Ginger ale?” he says, genuinely surprised. Rey grins.

“Best drink I know how to make.” Then, still grinning, she adds, “Thanks for saving my phone.”

He takes another long drink, and the sugary ginger flavor invades his mind in much the same way that Rey has done the past week. Time to get to the chase.

“Well, you can pay back the favor right now if you want.”

“That’s what the ginger ale was for,” she points out.

He sets the glass down and leans forward, too. “Drink’s not enough.”

She narrows her eyes at him. “Then what?”

“Tell me something about you.”

Rey grimaces, leaning back like she’s smelled something bad. He can almost see the wheels in her mind turning as she decides what she’s going to tell him, and he wonders if she realizes how transparent her thoughts are as they move across her face.

“Nothing to tell. I’m from Vegas and moved out here to be near the bar.” Then she kind of shrugs and her eyes flit to the door.

“Did you do the college thing?” He takes another drag of his drink, pretending not to look at her.

She makes a face. “Do I look like the kind of girl who goes to college?”

Ren sets the drink down hard. “Yeah, you do. The hell do you mean by that?”

She rolls her eyes. “You don’t have to be nice.”

“I’m _not_ nice,” he says, probably more emphatically than he should have. He scowls, because he’s fucking this up. Correcting himself, he adds, “You seem smart, that’s all.”

Rey gives him a puzzled look. “I repeat: you don’t know me at all.”

“Maybe, but I know street smarts when I see them.”

“Yeah? Well I know a concealed weapon when I see one,” she says, her eyes flitting down to his waist and the gun that he’s got holstered there.

“You get on the streets a lot in the real estate business?” And she puts so much sarcasm in the words that he knows she’s not fooled by Poe’s white lies, that she probably never has been. He takes a sip of his drink to hide the fact that he’s genuinely surprised she’d seen his gun.

“We do, actually,” he says, patting the weapon. How she’s noticed it is beyond him. It’s holstered and he’s wearing his undershirt on top of it. Christ, he’s got a concealed carry license. Not that this particular sidearm is registered with the state of Nevada. But still. He’s careful with it, and she’d _still_ seen it.

“Fascinating,” she says, and he has a hunch that she means that underneath all the sarcasm.

He decides to make her an offer, because that’s what he does. “I’ll tell you about my job if you tell me about you.”

“I’ll only disappoint you,” she says. She’s stretching, a yawn splitting her features as she extends her lean arms out and above her head. That’s when he sees the burns.

They’re small, dotting the soft underside of her upper arm like a constellation. He’s seen cigarette burns before but never this many. Faded pink edges that might almost be birthmarks if they weren’t in a straight line down the softest part of her forearm. Fuck, that must've hurt. Ren feels a black rage swell in his chest for a moment, and the anger is so total and obliterating that he has to force himself to inhale and exhale through it. He reminds himself that they’re old, faded and pink not red and angry. It’s not happening to her now.

Rey notices him studying her and drops her hands to her sides in a close approximation of casual disinterest. It’s close, but not close enough. But he’s patient. If he’s going to get her to talk to him about her mysterious injuries, it won’t be by taking her by surprise. Rey is a long con, if she’s a con at all. Small matter if she happens to open up to him about who did it. Easy enough to pay someone a quick house call. _Patience_.

“Fine. But I’m driving you home,” he tells her, his voice ragged.

“Like hell,” she snaps, setting down napkins she’s rolling up.

“I could make you,” he snaps, just to see what she does.

She gives him a half smile but her eyes are hard. “I’d make you regret trying.”

“Maybe you’d use that cute little knife you keep in your jacket?” he guesses, because two can play at this “I know you have a concealed weapon” thing. Her eyes flare and her hands stop their smooth rolling for just an instant. Just long enough to tell him that he’s startled her.

“Girl’s gotta have protection,” she says after a moment.

“Who _uses_ a switchblade?”

Her eyes flash. “People who need a portable weapon that can be opened one handed.”

“And that’s you?”

She gives him that same shrug again. “It’s a dangerous town. Maybe that was never an issue for you, since you’re like eighty feet tall and as wide as the Grand Canyon.”

He grins, and she pauses for a second and looks up at him, her mouth opening and closing. Ren waits, but when she doesn't speak he says, “What?”

She purses her lips. “Nothing.”

“C’mon,” he says, leaning forward. She dips her head to the side and there’s a long pause where she seems to be considering her options.

Finally, she looks back at him with those hazel eyes again and he feels a shot of pure electricity pass between them.

“It was a compliment. I really like the Grand Canyon,” she murmurs, and her voice is so soft, so unexpectedly vulnerable that for a second he’s speechless. She looks up at him through her lashes and she’s so fucking _sweet_ under all that sass. He’s robbed of breath.

“You ever been?” he says, once his heart starts beating again.

She nods. “Once. A long time ago.”

The soft look is fading away, and she turns her attention back to her work. He wants to say something. Tell her that he’d take her to the Grand Canyon this very fucking second if she asked him to. That he’d take her anywhere after that little smile. But he just sits there, staring at her face as she loses herself in her work again.

Poe and Finn appear at the bar out of fucking nowhere, half dragging Ren to the stage, trying to get him to sing Prince with them. Ren plants his feet, and he sees Rey grin.

“Absolutely not,” he deadpans.

“This is why we came here,” Finn counters.

“It’s why you came here,” he says, his gaze flicking over to where Rey has gone back to pretending not to notice them.

Poe counters, “If you do this, I’ll do five contracts tonight.”

Ren goes carefully, deadly blank. “You’ll do them anyway. And I’m not going.”

Poe lets go, frowning. “Christ, Ren.”

He just shakes his head, knowing he’s being an asshole but unable to stamp down the impulse. He wants to be alone with Rey for an _hour_. Is that so much to ask? Can’t he have this one fucking thing? Out of nowhere, he thinks of his father’s face as he says something like, _temper temper, kid._

“Go have fun,” Ren grits, waving them off. “Drinks on me tonight.”

Finn exhales sharply, tugging on the front of Poe’s leather jacket which Finn is, strangely, wearing. “We’re about to win some free shots and you can’t have _any_.”

Poe has apparently recovered his good humor, and he gives Rey a wink as the two pace back to the other end of the bar. Ren returns to his seat, feeling Rey’s eyes on his face.

“What?” he demands, not looking at her.

“Nothing.”

“Tell me,” he says, in much the same tone as he used with Poe.

But she doesn’t rise to it, and her voice is barely a whisper. “Why’d you come back here? You don’t like it.”

The gentleness in her voice steals the anger from his body like a cool breeze.

“I could ask you the same question,” he says, just as gently. It’s a lame line, but it’s fucking true.

She meets his eyes and it feels like he’s never been angry or sad in his entire life. “You first.”

“You want the truth or something Poe would say?” he says.

She blinks. “I guess the truth?”

He hesitates. “I came back to see you. Can’t stop thinking about you.”

She is instantly on the defensive. “I’m not-”

He waves a hand in front of him. “I know.”

“Oh,” she says, those honey eyes all wide and thoughtful.

“What about you? Why do you come back?” he presses.

She looks a bit bewildered at the subject change, but she’s quick. In the background, he hears Finn and Poe take the stage as Purple Rain’s opening strains fill the room. He leans forward slightly, and she rests her elbows on the high top bar, looking thoughtful and at ease, and he’s gratified. Really gratified. He thinks again about picking her up, taking her to his bike and driving off with her. Just leaving all the work and the brutality and the desert behind them and going someplace where it’s pretty. Rey should be living someplace pretty.

_Jesus, what is wrong with him?_

“I don’t mind it _that_ much here,” she says, like she can read his damn mind now. “The work is good and I like some of the regulars. And Phas is great,” she adds.

“You’d make more in tips if you worked in Vegas.” _And you’d be much, much closer to me._

That haunted look flashes again. Just for a second. But her voice is light when she speaks. “Nah. I hate Vegas. Too many people. I like all the space out here.”

“That why you like the Grand Canyon?” he says. She smiles again.

“Yeah. It’s so huge and empty. There’s this vista I saw once, Maricopa Point?”

He smiles. “I know the one. That view is insane.”

“Yeah. It feels like you’re standing on a different planet,” she says fondly. He sees her look over his head but knows that she’s not seeing him anymore. “It’s like, the whole earth has just fallen away and you’re the first person to ever be born. I used to have this awesome book about geology. Tectonic plates and all that stuff.”

He leans forward, loving the sound of her voice as it rolls out of her mouth. Noticing his attention, she looks a little embarrassed. “Anyway. No, I don’t want to work in Vegas.”

“Would you ever leave Nevada?” he murmurs.

She hesitates. “Yeah. I would. But it’s just…it’s hard to leave.”

“Yeah. I know the feeling.” His eyes travel to Finn and Poe, so sure and vibrant on the stage, just singing their damn hearts out like they’ve never felt anything negative, like the past never happened. He thinks of his parents and winces a little, the feeling of being a dick washing over him like a tide. Christ, he needs to get it together.

“You got a family?” Rey asks, scaring him with her apparent mind reading powers.

“Parents,” he mutters, trying not to be weird. “You?”

She shrugs. “Fairly typical stuff. I have a cat though. BB.”

His eyebrows rise. “I love cats.”

“Well, she’s a stray technically,” Rey amends, that same bashful, kind of embarrassed expression on her face. “But I feed her out behind the bar and I’m hoping one day she’ll follow me home or something. She has this mangled ear that always makes her look like she’s annoyed.”

“Have you fed her yet tonight?”

“Nope. I usually go around now though,” she says, avoiding his gaze. But he can hear the hint in her voice, and the hope behind it.

“Come on then,” he says, standing. “I need to meet this cat.”

X

On a second viewing, he decides that the space behind the bar is kind of charming, in a shitty way. There’s picnic tables covered in ashtrays and those outdoor Christmas lights that form a kind of makeshift roof of waving lights overhead, stringing from the roof over the tables and onto six wooden pikes stuck haphazardly in the ground about ten feet away. The sun is setting, and the desert is a warm, honey gold around them.

Rey moves past them, rounding the corner to the dumpster he’d seen her by last night. He wonders then if that’s what she’d been doing when he’d seen her here before, just lingering. Looking for some cat.

She tugs a plastic container out from underneath one of the trashcans, rattles it significantly, and lets out a low whistle.

“BB,” she calls in a singsong voice. The kind you’d use to talk to a child. Nothing happens

“What kind of name is BB?” he asks, watching her stare expectantly into the brush.

She throws him a withering look. “It stands for Big Baby. That’s what Phas calls her, but I think that’s rude so I shortened it.”

“You know, cats don’t actually speak English,” he points out.

“I know. But it’s the thought that counts,” she says, not at all embarrassed as she rattles around her Tupperware filled with dried cat foot. Rey frowns. “I guess she’s not coming today.”

“Hang on,” he says, reaching into his pocket and handing her the Slim Jim he’s been carrying around for like, two weeks because he’s not his _dad_ , and he’s never going to eat it.

Her face lights up as she takes it from him, a real smile. Ren looks long and hard at that smile, at her lips, the dusting of freckles, the little scar on her eyebrow. He just drinks in the sight of her happy. What would it feel like to hold her face in his while she smiled like that? Would the sweetness there pour out of her like heat? Could he taste it if he pressed his mouth to hers? He thinks that Rey’d probably cut a hole in his gut if he tried.

So he lets her go, watches her as she coughs and takes a step back from him, her smile a little embarrassed. _Time. Patience_.

Is this the moment when he realizes he’s not going to be able to let her slip away without getting some questions answered? Or was it last night? Rey, as if sensing the direction of his possessive thoughts, steps just out of arm’s reach of him and smiles wanly as a white and orange cat emerges from the scrub. She sidles up to Rey, eyeing the meat and Rey breaks off a tiny piece for the cat and holds it under her nose, letting the animal sniff it. Then, with a cheerful little meow, the cat eats the piece and sits down, patiently waiting for Rey to ration out the rest.

“See?” Rey says, pointing at the cat as if he hadn’t believed her. “This is BB. BB, this is Kylo Ren.”

And then he just stands there as she feeds the cat.

“This probably isn’t good for her,” Rey mutters, feeding BB another piece anyway. Ren crosses his arms and fights off a smile.

Rey glances at the watch on her wrist, and, without looking at him, murmurs, “You should check on Finn and Poe.”

“Why?” he says, not of a mind to do anything that involves leaving her alone while she’s within fifty feet of him and he could be hovering around her, just out of reach.

She throws him a sardonic smile. “Because Phasma’s going to make them their shots and you’re going to want to make sure she cuts them with something.”

Rey grimaces, thinking of last time. They’d sworn up and down it was the last time they get shit faced like that, but Finn and Poe only ever build off each other. They’re like two little kids when they hang out. At the office it’s different, because Poe’s always with him in the field and Finn runs defensive stuff from his desk, but put those two together and it’s like Mentos and fucking Coke.

“Fuck,” he mutters, thinking of the drunken hug fest he’d been subjected to last time he took them home from this bar. “You still gonna be here when I get back?”

She looks up at him through her lashes and kind of shrugs. “I haven’t left yet, have I?”

He wants to say something else, but there doesn’t seem to be anything to add. So he goes back inside, feeling vaguely uneasy, and catches Phasma by the arm as she lines up six shot glasses at the bar. Phasma has a bottle of tequila in one hand and oh _hell_ no.

“You’re going to cut those with something,” he growls at her.

Phas raises an eyebrow. “This isn’t your territory, First Order boy.”

Ren’s eyes flit to Finn and Poe, laughing and relaxed in a way they rarely seem when they’re in the city. He thinks about Rey out back. About her cat and her bike with the flat tire. He thinks about the assholes that congregate here, bringing trash around his friends. Someone has to do something about it, for Christ’s sakes.

“It is now,” he says flatly. He crosses his arms, fucking hoping she gives him a hard time about it.

Phas gives him a long look. Then, sighing, she shrugs and pours just a little tequila in each glass.

“What do you want me to add instead?” she asks.

Ren watches his two colleagues, his only real friends. Ren should be with them, making sarcastic comments and encouraging them to text weird shit to their exes, but he doesn't. He just leans against the bar, caught between here and there.

“Ginger ale,” he finally says.

X

When Rey doesn’t come back in, he walks back outside to check on her. She’s still by the dumpster, but BB has fled back into the night. He tightens his fists, because Rey is talking to a gaunt looking man Ren vaguely recognizes, which doesn't speak well of the young man’s character, that’s for damn sure. Everything about the guy screams methamphetamines. The guy sees Ren looking at him and his jaw snaps shut like someone’s pressed a button. Rey follows his gaze and when she sees him she frowns. She literally shoos the guy away with a flap of her hands. The tweaker skulks back around the side of the bar as Rey marches over to him with an unholy gleam in her eyes.

“Spying is rude,” she points out.

“I’m sorry,” he says dryly. “I just came to check on you.”

A few seconds pass and he forces himself not to react. She relaxes as she realizes that he’s not going to ask who the guys was. Which is foolish of her, really, because he only ever relents so he can push back harder somewhere else.

“Right. That was my friend,” she adds, clarifying with a detail he hasn’t asked for. She’s not a bad liar, but definitely not a good one.

“Right,” he says, crossing his arms.

She looks at her foot. “Should we go back in?”

He doesn’t say anything to that, because he doesn’t want to. He wants to stay here with her and this weird cat by this horrible dumpster. But he can’t say that without scaring the shit out of her, so he just gives her the half nod which serves as about thirty percent of his method of communication. She doesn’t move. She’s looking up at him, her back to the desert and her lips parting slightly as the sun slants low and dim across their bodies. For a second he swears she’s about to kiss him.

But then she laughs, just slightly, and pulls away.

“You know, you scare the shit out of me,” she laughs.

“That’s not what I want to do at all,” he growls.

“Then don’t be so fucking tall and dressed like a biker,” she snorts. He grins.

“Can’t change that. Don’t want to.”

She shakes her head, but not in a sad way. “Yeah, I can’t really picture you in anything else.” Then, she takes a step forward and adds, “It suits you.”

He raises a brow, a little bewildered by the subject change but fucking _into_ it all the same. “Yeah?”

The tiniest shake of her head. He reaches out and runs a finger across her cheek. Just gently. Just once. He sees her shudder and her eyes close for a second as she leans into his touch. Her skin is like velvet and he is hyper aware of just how vulnerable she is making herself to him. Fragile isn’t the right word. Maybe, brittle? Very strong if stressed one way, but breakable if contorted in any other direction.

_Jesus, what the fuck is wrong with him?_

“You need to be careful,” he murmurs, letting his finger trail to the edge of her face, right next to the shell of her ear. Every nerve in his body is awake, tingling and hot under his skin.

He sweeps a strand of hair behind her ear and it falls right back out, too short to be contained. Her eyes open. “I am careful.”

And he wants to tell her that, no, she’s not, or she would have sent him away for longer while she met her friend, and she wouldn’t have walked home at two am alone or had a standing date in the alley of a seedy bar. If she were careful, she wouldn’t let him touch her like this. But Rey is not careful, and he lets the pad of his thumb brush down to the edge of her jaw.

A meow from the brush startles them both, and he’s so tense from the sheer proximity of being this near to her, touching her, that he instinctively reaches for his weapon even as Rey leaps back, eyes wide.

When they see BB sitting expectantly on the cement retaining wall, they both laugh, though Rey’s eyes train on his hand as he relaxes it back at his side. The laughter trails off as they look at each other, unsteady with this new thing that has grown between them.

Abruptly, she pushes past him, walking to the door with that serious set to her face. He hears the door open but she doesn’t walk through it.

He keeps his face to the desert and murmurs, “That wasn’t the end of this conversation.”

He hears her push into the bar, her cheap sneakers hitting the tile and, as the door swings shut, the faintest sound of her laugh.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The alternate title for this chapter is "jesus christ, kylo." Also, anyone ready for some Rey POV next chapter??   
> By the way, have you guys read my other favorite scrappy Rey story? [Chivalry Isn't Dead, It Just Joined the Dark Side.](http://archiveofourown.org/works/6134596/chapters/14058175) It's the Renaissance Fair AU I didn't know I needed by [fracking_sweet](http://archiveofourown.org/users/frackin_sweet/pseuds/frackin_sweet) and [hato.](http://archiveofourown.org/users/hato/pseuds/hato)  
> Also, thank you SO much for your positive response to the last chapter! I was so encouraged by it!  
> [PS. you can find me on Tumblr.](https://violetwilson.tumblr.com/)


	3. Dancing

**Chapter 3.**

**Dancing.**

Rey used to love dancing. She had a school friend when she was a kid who was incredible at it. People used to think they were sisters when they would dance together at school events, and for a while Rey wondered if her calling was movement. Artistry. But then the community center’s dance program got cut during the recession and that dream went down the tubes. But she _used_ to love it, which feels like it should count for something, at least.

Finn is sitting in the dressing room chair across from where she’s standing in front of the mirror, looking at the black dress from all sides. It would be good for dancing, if that were the sort of thing she _did_.

“For the thousandth time, it’s gorgeous. You’re gorgeous,” Finn insists.

Rey throws him a look. “And for the thousandth time, it’s too much.”

Finn slumps in the chair, feigning exhaustion. “It’s a nice restaurant, and we’ve got a dinner date.”

“Can’t we go someplace... less nice? Someplace that doesn’t require a makeover montage?” she whines.

Finn sits up. “No, because I need to make a good impression on Poe.”

Rey smooths the fabric down on her thighs. God, she needs to shave. And some fucking moisturizer.

“By bringing me as your a date?” Rey says. “Aren’t you like, super gay?”

Finn rolls his eyes, “Yes. But Poe adores you and he’ll think I’m cool if I bring you. I want him to see me be sophisticated and amazing,” Finn says grandly.

She grins at him. “You are sophisticated and amazing. And I’m hardly going to lend you any of that. Seriously, just ask him out.”

Finn looks down at his nails in a really awful impression of nonchalance. “You know, Kylo’s going to be there too. Since it’s a work thing.”

Rey feels every nerve in her body perk up. Every traitorous nerve. She resumes smoothing her dress. Play it cool. Play it _cool_. Which is a futile effort, really, because half the reason she’d agreed to let Finn buy her this dress was in case he was at the party. She might be a sand rat, but she’s got some pride, and okay, yeah, she wants him to think she’s beautiful. Maybe see her when she’s not sweaty and nervous for once.

Tugging at the hem of the silky dress, she mutters, “Well I really shouldn’t go, then.

Finn frowns. “You hate him that much?”

Rey knows she’s a liar. She lies all the time. She lied to Finn, to Phasma, and yeah, to Kylo Ren. She’s kind of lying to Finn right now by letting him treat her to this dress. She’s implying that she’s the sort of friend he can count on for things, that she’s capable of being the kind of friend he deserves. But she can’t help it. She likes Finn, damn it, and she likes Poe, too. Maybe she can’t have a normal life, but she wants it for her friends. And yeah, she likes Kylo Ren. But purely in an aesthetic sense. There’s no _feelings_ involved, because she might be a liar but she’s not stupid.

“No, just, if it’s a work thing, shouldn't I like…” she waves a hand vaguely in the air, letting the smooth fabric slip from her fingers.

Finn grins. “You’re intimidated?”

She points an accusing finger at him. “First of all, you’re using me to make Poe jealous so don’t get all smug on me. And second of all, _no_ , I’m not intimidated.”

That second part is a blatant lie, but hey. Counts.  

“It’s just a work dinner,” Finn says, tenting his fingers in front of his face like he’s deep in thought. “A bribe, really, to keep us all from quitting for another week.”

Finn rolls his eyes, but Rey knows her friend doesn’t mean it. Finn’s the most loyal person she knows, and even though Finn has almost no competition for that particular honor, even she knows he’s something special. For Poe, Kylo Ren gave him a job when he only knew the basics of decrypting and encrypting data, and Poe taught him how to fire a gun, work the street, and be part of a team. For Finn, that’s the only thing that really matters. His colleagues are like a family to him, and that’s all there is to it. She smiles, that thrumming, longing feeling tugging at something in her chest. It’s painful and sweet. But if anyone deserves that kind of belonging, it’s Finn.

Turning her mind back to the task at hand, she turns her gaze back to the mirror.

Finn says, “Where did you and Ren go the other night?”

Rey feigns an interest in the quality of the stitches (like she knows anything about that), because thinking about that night makes her feel things she’d rather not look at directly. Some things, like bad memories and the really good ones, shouldn’t be dwelt on.  

“Just out back. He wanted to meet my cat.”

Finn arches a brow. “Is that what the kids are calling it?”

“Shut up,” she groans. “Go get me a different dress.”

“Did I hit a nerve?” he smirks.

“Keep this up and I’ll make you buy me two dresses,” she growls.

“You got it, boss,” he says.

The shop clerk comes over. She’s brunette and cute, with a bright smile and long silky hair.  

“The black is very chic,” the woman says. Her smile is warm. Rey feels herself kind of jam up. She never knows what to say to girls, and this one is pretty. They always seem so different from her, so solid and so _clean._

“Yeah,” Rey says, fingering the material vaguely, wishing, wanting…

The girl reaches for a dress hanging on a rack, lifting a folded garment off a textbook she’s obviously been reading. The girl hands her the dress, which is green and satiny, but Rey’s staring at the textbook. The girl follows her gaze. It’s a geology textbook, and her longing turns into outright envy.   

“Oh, I’ve got a midterm tomorrow, so…” the girl murmurs, looking embarrassed as she stuffs the book into a drawer like it’s something dirty.

“You’re in college? That’s cool,” Rey blurts, her hands knotting in the dress.

The girl’s answering smile is less blinding but more honest. “Thanks. Trying to get my gen eds out of the way in town and then maybe transfer to ASU or something.”

Rey feels a surge of longing. It’s envy, really. Leaving. College.

“That’s awesome,” Rey says, and she means it, too.

The girl smiles. “Thanks girl. I’m Jessika, by the way. Try that green one on, it’ll suit you.”

Finn returns, an armful of brightly colored dresses in his arms.

“I found, like, a lot. How do you feel about sequins?” he says brightly.

Jessika makes a noise of strangled distress and leaps to take the armful from Finn, who looks very pleased with himself. Rey lets the silky thin green dress run through her hands, thinking that it feels like water in her fingers. She thinks of Kylo Ren and his hand on her cheek, how it had felt to be touched, to _let_ him touch her, and that warm longing feeling fills her again. Distracting. Dangerous. She knows better than to think about stuff like this, but the feeling in her chest is like melting butter or the bubbles in good champagne. She can’t help but want to feel that feeling. Attraction is so unfair.  

Kareoke night had been nice. Really nice. Or at least until he’d caught her with Tim and he’d looked at her with that cool, measured expression on his face that said that he was not fooled by her. She reminds herself that there was nothing she could have done to avoid it; Plutt changed the order at the last minute, so they’d needed new pickup details and a new check. She’s annoyed more than anything that Plutt had sent Tim all the way out to her work when she would have much preferred to swing by the Palace and pick it up herself. But Plutt liked reminding her that he could come in and interfere with her life whenever he wanted, and she should be grateful he hadn’t sent someone high or something. Or worse, come in person.

Seeing Ren standing in the doorway, watching her, had made her feel shamed, and then angry, because fuck him for judging her when he’s a damn assassin anyway. Or something. She’s not entirely sure what he is, but he’s no more of a white knight than she is a damsel, and it had pissed her off to see him standing there, all tall and muscled and hot as sin and seeing her when all she wanted was to slip into the shadows. And worse, he was even kind of nice about her safety, in an awkward, menacing way of his.  

Jessika’s voice drags her out of her thoughts.

“Try it on, you’re going to look smoking hot,” she enthuses. Rey is skeptical of that in a pretty major way, but what can it hurt. Rey looks down at the green dress in her hands and decides to quit fighting it. It’s not like she’s going to flirt with him or anything.

X

Jessica was right: the green dress was the right one. Wearing her new swishy dress, Rey gets out of Finn’s enormous SUV in front of the high end restaurant in Vegas’ upscale dining district. Even off the Strip, which no local in their right mind would go to unless dragged by visiting friends or relatives, the area the upscale restaurant is situated in is glamorous. Manicured front lawns, strategic lighting and illuminated fountains.

The dress slides around her thighs in a silky, expensive way. It’s odd, wearing something that makes her fit in with the rest of the glitzy crowd. Rey knows a lot about skirting on the edges of these scenes, blending in with the shadows so she’s never seen, and it’s a thrill to walk right through it and fit in.

Rey’s been to this restaurant before, doing a handoff with some seedy executive type and negotiating a little over a drink at the onsite bar. The bar was upscale, but it had been midafternoon at the time. Nothing like the way the high-ceilinged restaurant looks now as they walk into the restaurant. The whole thing is all lit up in strategic areas to let corners fall into deep shadows. Linen covered tables, high backed chairs, and silver flatware gleams dully in the half light, the whole place is designed to evoke luxury, excess, and general debauchery for a crowd who imagines themselves above such indulgence.

Above all, Rey notes that the high leather backed banquettes and the impeccable white tables are far enough apart to allow for private conversation. Rey’s not stupid. She knows that Ren’s organization skims pretty near the border of illegal activity even when they’re _not_ executing vigilante justice under the table, but to her mind, it’s par for the course. It’s a dangerous city, and dangerous people live here. Vegas is glistening and inventive, sure, but there’s an underbelly that drags along the ground for every shiny bauble who pops into the spotlight.

For every glossy club promoter or model, there’s a Rey to support their lifestyle and get them what they need. And then there’s a Kylo Ren, for when they need other things. But Finn and his moral compass have never seemed to struggle with the details of his work, or at least he’s never said anything about it, and he’s the only person she knows with moral fiber.   

Finn extends his arm to her as they walk past the hostess to a table in the back. In his tux and bowtie, Rey barely recognizes the half-starved runaway she’d met by accident outside the third rate motel where she was doing a delivery. She’d been younger then, so she’d been running harder drugs. Cops are less suspicious of a scrawny teenager than they would be of an older person.

“You look awesome,” Finn whispers. Rey smiles, the uncomfortable feeling of being in this restaurant easing slightly.

Rey tilts her head toward him. “I hate this place.”

He nods, unsurprised. “I owe you.”

He doesn’t, and she hopes he knows that too. In a world where nothing is free and everything is about status, it’s the one luxury she can afford to offer her friendship to him with no strings attached. The dress and the free meal are a plus, but she would’ve come without them.

Finn leads her around the cavernous restaurant to the private table in the back of the restaurant roped off for their use. Rey wonders if this is the night Finn’s finally going to come clean as to the exact nature of his work. She can’t pretend to be fooled by his “real estate” thing much longer.

Not that Kylo Ren had been that secretive about it either. She wonders if that’s his whole thing, being the most direct and transparent liar she’s ever met. The way he’d looked at her made her feel like he could somehow see inside her, like he knew everything about her. Which had pissed her off, because she’d assumed that was just a hackneyed cliché of an idea. Like love at first sight or running to the airport to stop your lover from getting on a plane.

And yet there she’d been, mindlessly rolling silverware long after she’d needed to just to have excuse not to leave him. As they approach the table, she knows that attending this dinner is just as much an excuse as the silverware thing was. God, she’s an idiot. The dress swishes, indifferent to her discomfort, as they reach the table.

Rey forces herself to look at everyone in attendance _but_ him, nodding as she’s introduced to a few people she’s never met, most notably a ginger haired man with hollow cheekbones and a direct, skeptical smile. Rey sits between Finn and Poe, and only then does she look up at him. He meets her gaze with a gleam in his dark eyes, his dark suit jacket and white shirt setting off his dark hair and pale complexion in a way that does things to her stomach. She wants to meet his gaze boldly and look on like she doesn’t give a damn what he does or where he looks, but it’s hard when he seems so unapologetically smug about looking at her. His smile is lazy and half formed, and he makes zero attempt to hide it, propping one elbow on the table and surveying her like he wants to eat her. Another cliché, she thinks. His suit jacket sits on his shoulders like it was made custom for his broad proportions. He looks too big for the chair, too raw for this restaurant, too handsome to be a real person for christs sake. As she looks back, he gives her a smug smile.

The trick to avoiding blushing, she’s learned, is to pinch yourself so savagely that your body’s responses are distracted and the blush dies before it ever forms. So she does. It hurts, but she still doesn’t look away.

Poe’s voice is right in her ear as he leans over and whispers, “You look amazing.”

Rey breaks her eye contact battle with Ren and leans over to Poe. She’s happy to see him and relieved to have an excuse to look away. In her peripheral vision, she sees Ren’s smile widen. Poe’s got a movie star face, and she’s always liked him. He’s one of those _guys_. Handsome, flirty, funny. He’s a catch, and Rey can feel Finn practically vibrating with nerves next to her.

Rey wishes she knew how to say something smooth and clever, but she doesn’t, so she says, “Thanks. Finn helped me pick it out.”

Poe grins, lifting his wine glass to her in a toast. “Dress has nothing to do with it.”

She’s not sure if it’s Ren’s recent _I am going to eat you for dinner_ expression or Poe’s compliment, but suddenly Rey feels honest to god pretty for the first time in a long time, and she grins at Poe. Maybe coming here wasn’t a horrible idea after all.

Poe leans in. “You still down for an adventure later?”

Rey had planned on ditching. Faking sick or just leaving with no explanation at all, but the dress and the good feelings and the promise of good food have made her feel…tempted. She’d forgotten what it’s like to go to these restaurants for pleasure, rather than for business.

She grins at him. “Sure.”

Poe brightens and Finn, to her right, lets out a stifled little cheer.

Ren stands then, glowering at them all like an annoyed teacher. A sudden and very naughty image of Ren with a ruler in his hand flashes in her mind’s eye, and she looks sharply down at her plate in silent mortification. It’s the damn white shirt, she thinks.  

“Thank you all for coming,” Ren says coolly. “As we all know, we’ve had a busy few weeks. So all of you should eat a proper meal to get ready for the next one, because literally nothing will change. Enjoy some food and drink at my expense, and next week we’ll do it all over again.”

Then he sits, his rigid toast apparently concluded. Everyone at the table laughs, even Hux, and light conversation springs up as Ren sits down and resumes his perusal of her. She ignores him, because she’s technically a pro at this sort of thing.

Hux turns immediately to Ren, but Ren keeps glancing over at Rey, his dark eyes on her face. She can feel him watching her, because every time he looks over she sees it in her peripheral vision and heats up like his gaze has physical weight. Even as Poe and Finn talk around her about Finn’s new suit and how much it suits him and how great they each were this week and on and on, Rey just sits there, letting herself be watched. Liking it. Which is unsettling.

The menu has been pre-determined for them, and a waiter sets down wine and food, sparing Rey an internal struggle about the implications Ren’s blatant perusal of her. She ignores the wine and goes straight into to the pasta dish, which is warm and buttery and covered in some sauce that might be, like, squash? Is squash sauce a thing? She’s not sure. She doesn’t care. It’s the best thing she’s had to eat in months, and it’s only with a concerted effort of will and an eyebrow raise from Finn that she stops herself from devouring the whole thing in a few bites.

Right. She’s pretending to be a normal person.

People can say what they want about Vegas, but the food in these elaborate, pricey resort restaurants is to die for. Rey’s distracted from her food inhalation by Ren signaling for the waiter, who comes to his side like he’s been waiting for the summons. Does everyone just do what he wants them to? What would that be like? Ren murmurs something to him, and the waiter’s eyes flick to Rey for just a second. Just enough to fill Rey with unease. But then he’s gone, and Ren finally replies to Hux, who has been waiting grouchily at his elbow.

The whole thing is a dance she’s familiar with. Not the fun, freeing sort of dance, but one of those super elaborate games of strategy that take weeks to master. Personally, she never understood people who compared politics to chess. In chess there are rules, clear players, and strategies that can secure you a victory. Plus, you at least know who your opponent is. None of those things are all that common in her experience, because in her life there aren’t rules, there is only change and movement, action and reaction. And violence. And fear. She stabs a bite of pasta with more than necessary force and her eyes flit up to Ren again as he talks to Hux in an undertone. It’s hard not to envy him a little.  

Rey’s lived in the shadow of Vegas for her whole life, skirting around the bright lights to try and grow something for herself in the shadows. It’s been a fight, but she’s getting there. Probably. Okay, she has no idea if it’s working, but the past few months have been calmer. She’s had less work to do, and she’s gotten more shifts at the bar, which is good. The tips there are decent, and she likes Phasma. Phasma took her in and taught her to tend bar and pick pockets, and she even helped Rey get an apartment nearby.

Phasma’s motives had been mysterious to her when they’d first met after Rey ran away that last time, but she understands now that Phas has her own agenda that’s better served by a scrappy waitress with something to lose than a girl who might not hesitate to call the cops at the sight of some of the dodgier things that go on at the Scavenger Bar. Still, self-serving kindness is close enough to the real thing for her.

Finn can give her a dress and dinner, and Phas can give her a job and her pay in cash. Everyone wins.

She’s interrupted by the sight of a black sleeved arm depositing a tall flute of something next to her plate. She flinches, startled, and then glances instinctively at Ren. No one else has received a flute. Is this some kind of test? But he gives her a faint lift of the chin, just barely a nod, and her fear abates. Rey thanks the waiter and lifts the flute, sniffing carefully.

Ren’s voice, low and soft, cuts across the table. “Drink it.” Rey narrows her eyes at the command, and he raises a brow and adds, “If you want to.”

She gives him another long look, but takes a cautious sip anyway. Ginger ale. It’s ginger ale. The fizzy, bubbly drink fills her pallet, and Rey gives him the faintest of smiles. He’d remembered that? She wavers between feeling warm all over and nervous that he’d been paying that much attention. Nothing good ever comes from people noticing her, so why the hell does she feel so good? _Probably because ginger ale is the drink of champions._

Poe and Finn are literally leaning around her to talk to each other at this point, and she wonders for the millionth time why Finn didn’t just sit by Poe himself if that’s why he’d come here. Too scared, she knows. She can relate, but it’s still irritating. Ren is talking to Hux again, and, sick of fifth wheeling, Rey stands up and tries her best to discretely walk to the bathroom.

She knows Ren watches her. Guys like him don’t miss a beat. Well, neither do girls like her, and she takes the first turn that gets her out of his line of sight and hopes he wonders if she’s run off into the night. Serves him right for being so attractive.

She kills time in the bathroom, wishing she had a smart phone with games on it. Or a tablet with an e-reader. She heard you can check out ebooks from the library, and the idea is tempting. Never mind that Mountain Spring is technically in a different county than Vegas’ Clark county. But still, she could fake her way into a library card in the best county in the state, right? She stares in the mirror and fusses with her hair. She reapplies mascara, already dreading taking it off tonight, because she never remembers to buy makeup remover.

Her shitty, not-ereader-equipped phone beeps at her. The text has contains an address and no other details appears on her screen, and Rey sighs. Great. More work from Plutt. One of these days she’s going to put a bullet in that asshole’s head if the drugs don’t get him. Maybe, if she’s lucky, some addict will off him for her. Shoving her phone in the dress’s pocket, she faces herself in the mirror and reminds herself that she’s _not_ lucky.

“Get your head out of the clouds,” she tells herself, but her reflection just blinks back at her.

When she finally leaves the bathroom, Ren is standing opposite the bathroom door, leaning calmly against the wall with his arms crossed. Her heart has some kind of spasm in her chest and she just barely stops herself from gasping in her surprise. She’s going soft, because she hadn’t expected to see him there, all brooding and alone and looking at her with that same expression from back at the bar.

It’s funny, she thinks, that she had thought she might never see him again after that Tim thing. And now here they are, her dressed up in a costume and him looking very different in his suit than the man in the leather jacket with the wry smile. He’s all business now, and she has the uneasy feeling she’s just walked right into a trap. Which is a paranoid-ass thing to think, but guys like him don’t just…do this.

His face is inscrutable. Rey glances down the dimly lit corridor. No one else is coming or going, but she’s still within earshot of Finn. Even as she does these mental calculations, she doesn’t feel afraid. Not anymore than she usually does when she’s in within shooting distance of Plutt’s absurd Vegas joint, anyway.

“Hi,” she says, shifting her weight from foot to foot.

“You know, it’s nice to get you alone,” he murmurs, eyeing her up and down with naked appreciation. He doesn’t linger on her breasts, which is classy. “Alone somewhere else than next to a dumpster, that is.”

Rey affects nonchalance. “Finn asked me to be his date. Said they were allowed to bring friends for once?”

Ren crosses his arms. “Yeah. _Friends_.”

His tone is so pointed that he doesn’t even have to ask the question for her to blurt out the answer. “Finn’s just a friend.” He raises a brow, and Rey, recovering her pride a little, adds, “Not that it’s your business.”

Annoyed, she makes to walk past him but he takes one purposeful step forward and she stops as surely as if he’d grabbed her by the arm. Christ. He frowns like he’s displeased somehow.

“I’m glad to hear that,” he murmurs, but he doesn't sound glad at all. He sounds…hungry. His eyes flit down her body and, fuck her, he’s checking her out. She cocks her hip out and rolls her shoulders back, deciding that she can at least give him as good as she’s getting. She stares right at him, and the feeling of being so bold, deliberately being seen by him, sends a thrill up her spine that makes her skin tingle.

“It’s good to see you, Rey,” he says, still staring at her so intensely. So seriously. It feels like an enormous understatement, because he looks like he wants to eat her. Finally, the contact is too much and Rey looks at her feet, wishing she could go back to being invisible again, but also desperately wishing that she could feel this seen all the time. It makes her feel rooted to the spot, but not in that fearful kind of way that makes her feel nauseous. It’s like she’s rooted to the ground, connected to the center of the earth through nearly five thousand miles of rock layers, sediment, and tectonic plates. Right down to the center of the Earth and its magma core.

Rey knows that, if she told him the 100%-all-the-way truth, she might tell him that she’s glad to see him too, that he looks like a sex god in his suit, that she wants to mess up his hairdo and ride home with him on his motorcycle and make him say her name in that same serious tone, only louder and repeatedly. She likes the way it sounds when he says it, which is unusual because she’s never liked her name, never even understood it. But when he says it, for the first time she thinks it’s kind of cool.

And she’s grateful to him for that.  

“Glad to be here,” she whispers back.  

“What are you doing after this?” he asks, and even though Rey tries to make herself leave, turn back, run for safety, her feet will not budge. Every instinct she has is pointing out that this man is a stranger with connections to shadowy criminal organizations that oppose the one she’s in. He’s big and way too observant, and even worse, he’s attractive. She shouldn’t be alone with him like this, and she definitely shouldn't want to put her hand on his bicep and squeeze it just to see what he’d do.

Something in her answers the hungry tone in his voice, thrilling through her stomach.

“Going to a thing with Finn and Poe,” she manages to say.

Ren’s voice is a low rumble. “A _thing_?”

And just like that, she wants to tell him things, over divulge information.

“Yeah, some party. I’m not actually sure where,” she murmurs, grateful she doesn’t have to lie to him about that, at least. But she really should know where she’s going. She should have asked them. Yet another sign she’s getting sloppy.

Kylo Ren smiles. “Well maybe I’ll see you there.”

Her eyes widen. “You’re going too?”

He shrugs a broad shoulder. “Hard to say, since you can’t tell me where you’re going.”

She snorts a laugh. “True.”

He rolls his shoulders back and, in a low tone, says, “Listen, ditch your thing. Come with me instead.”

She’s startled, so she reacts on impulse. “Wait, seriously?”

He gives her a searching look. “Yeah. Finn and Poe are going to spend the whole time eye-fucking each other. You sure you want to be in the middle of that?” His expletive makes her think of a lot of decidedly active daydreams, and she clears her throat. But Ren’s not done. “Besides, you wouldn’t regret it if you came with me. I could promise you that.”

Sweet Jesus. Why does his voice have to sound like that? Like food, or a good night of peaceful rest. or a soft blanket. Rey gives herself a pinch on the back of her thigh where he can’t see it and her head clears of this weird, dreamy fog. Is she fucking insane? He’s some kind of personal-security hitman sex demon. She doesn’t need this in her life. She can barely afford to have friends, let alone get involved with someone like him, and the last thing she needs is Plutt getting wind of her getting involved with a rival.

“I’d take care of you,” he murmurs, his voice heated.

Rey shakes her head. Relationships will come after she moves away. When she’s finally clean of her debt and her past. The room sways slightly as he takes a step forward, like he can sense she’s trying think of a way to leave him. He makes no move to touch her, he just stands fractionally closer and looks at her. And it’s enough to pin her to the spot.

“Sorry, I can’t,” she breathes, kind of hoping he’ll do something to make her, kind of hoping he’ll give her that diffident shrug and walk away and definitely not because she wants to check out his butt.  

But he doesn’t do either. His jaw twitches and he relaxes slightly. “Shame. Well, I’ll see you around sometime soon, I’m sure.”

“Yeah, I hope so,” she murmurs. Maybe she should bail on this party after all. But he’s giving her that small, secretive smile and she feels a little wobbly. She wants to bite his lip, because he looks smug. Which she doesn’t trust at all. She’s just denied him, why would he look like she’d somehow pleased him? Ren drips secrets and sex, and if she were smart she would have bolted by now.

“Should we, uh, go back?’ she says, wishing there was someone else in this hallway to dispel the heat she feels between them, like a mirage on a hot day. Because apparently she won’t do it herself.

His voice cool and controlled, he purrs, “Whatever you want, Rey.”

She just nods, and to her simultaneous pleasure and discomfort, he puts a hand on her lower back and leads her back to the table, his eyes fixed ahead. People get the fuck out of their way, and when they get back to the table she squirms internally at what an attention grabbing entrance they’re making. Ren’s hand is firm on her back, and the contact sends heat rushing up her spine. People at other tables stare as he pushes her chair in, and Rey sort of wishes she was dead. Lord help her if this gets back to Plutt. She’s not 100% sure what Ren is, exactly, but he’s close enough to an enforcer to get her into trouble.

He lets his hand brush her exposed shoulder for a second as he walks back to his chair, and then he’s gone from behind her, returning to his own chair. He resumes talking to Hux like the whole thing hadn’t happened. She feels exposed with him on the other end of the table, and she wishes he had stayed, standing behind her to watch her back. Nonsense. Childish, dangerous daydreams. Then his cuff rides up as he lifts a hand to run his hand through his hair and Rey has to look away to shake her head out of the gutter.

Knowing her luck, this situation is going to fuck her over in every way but the one she’d actually enjoy. Or, she thinks, taking a sip of her ginger ale flute, maybe just this once she’ll get lucky.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Is Rey a little gay for Jessika? Are Rey and Ren ever going to talk to each other someplace normal? NO! But stay tuned anyway!   
> Also, posting this a little early because I was too excited. Thank you all! Nearly 100 kudos, I'm so thrilled!!!!  
> [PS. you can find me on Tumblr.](https://violetwilson.tumblr.com/)


	4. The Party

**Chapter Four.**

**The Party.**

In the passenger seat, Hux barks, “Hey fuckwit, can you focus?”

Ren turns an acid glare on his colleague. Hux is probably the orneriest, smuggest, pettiest bastard this side of the Atlantic, but usually Ren likes him. Sure, he’s the worst, but he’s a loyal second in command, and his resting bitch face makes the rest of the team sit up a little straighter. Not a bad person to have at his back.

But Ren’s not interested in their revenue goals, Finn’s latest software patch, or Poe’s latest ridiculous stunt in the field. Nope. He’s got his mind on one thing exactly: Rey doesn’t know that she’s coming to a party at his house, and he didn’t tell her. Will she be pissed off? Make that cute little startled face? Punch him in the stomach? He’s so pleased with himself he almost isn’t annoyed at Hux for demanding his attention.

“Sorry,” he lies. “My mind was elsewhere.”

Hux makes a little noise of disgust. “Should we do something about Finn and Poe? They’re making me nauseous.”

Ren laughs. “They’re entitled to a little relaxation on the side. You should try it sometime,” he adds, turning his car onto his street. He lives a good deal away from the Strip in a suburban Las Vegas’ community is not unlike others he’s seen in his time. Row houses, mostly, with rocky “lawns” that stretch down to wide paved streets dotted with streetlights. But his place is on the edge of the development and faces a wide area of undeveloped land that falls into total darkness after the sun sets. The rugged backdrop has been the perfect setting for his primary residence.

Hux purses his lips. “Maybe you’re right.”

That catches Ren’s attention, and he glances over to see his lieutenant looking abstractedly out the window. Ren has never known Hux to daydream. Daydreams aren’t actionable. Daydreams don’t drive revenue or satisfy the boss. Hux looks thoughtful now, and it makes him look younger.

“Have you got someone in mind?” Ren says, trying not to sound too interested.

Hux, yanked back to the present, glares at Ren. “No. I was thinking of our documentation.”

“Sure,” Ren says, smirking at Hux in a way he knows the other man loathes.

But Hux doesn’t take the bait. “Are Rey and Finn a thing?”

Ren nearly crashes the fucking car.

“The fuck is it to you?” he snaps.

Hux smirks. “I knew it. What were you thinking, cornering her in the bathroom hallway?”

Ren rolls his eyes. “I met her at the bar. She owes me a favor, that’s all.”

“What kind of favor?” Hux sneers. Ren reaches over and punches him hard on the shoulder.

“Fuck off,” he says as Hux hisses in pain.

“Well either way,” Hux growls, rubbing his temple. “She’s too good for you.”

Ren thinks of the knife in her coat pocket, her mysterious origin, her burns, and wonders if she isn’t exactly right for him.  

“I wonder why Finn doesn’t talk about her,” Hux muses.

“She’s coming to the party tonight,” Ren murmurs. “You can ask her yourself.”

Hux pulls out his phone and pulls up his email. “I know. Finn mentioned it.”

“When?” Ren snaps, irritated to be left out of the loop.

“At dinner. You were too moon-eyed to notice.” Hux is only pretending to be bored, because they both know the only thing they have in common is a seventh-grader’s appreciation for good gossip.

Ren pulls the car up to his driveway and his architectural white block of a modernist house comes into view. The design had been his mother’s, and although he’s not big on architecture or domesticity in any particular way, Ren appreciates its starkness.

Ren kills the engine. “I guess Finn’s entitled to a secret.”

Hux unbuckles his seatbelt and throws Ren a withering look. “Is he?”

Ren frowns, because he’d also like to know the details of Finn and Rey’s relationship. Fuck if he’s going to let Hux know just how much. Or why.

He gets out of the car without answering and walks into the house, shrugging off his jacket. He needs a a shower. Hux moves to the office where he will, invariably, hole up for the rest of the night and send Ren a series of bewilderingly specific emails that Ren will ignore until Monday. He’s not sure why Hux even comes to these parties if all he does is work.

But he’s not even irritated, because tonight Rey is coming to his house. He’s going to see her on his turf, assuming Finn and Poe don’t fuck up and lose her somewhere along the line.  

The party is a typical thing for them. Mostly populated with friends of friends, Ren’s happy enough to open his doors to a rotating crowd of Las Vegas’ seedier characters. They get a party, and Ren gets a discrete place to exchange information and tips with members of the Vegas underground. Plus, Finn and Poe really are big party people and the events are usually pretty fun.

At this point, the tradition of parties every other Friday at his place is so long standing that he barely has to plan it. Finn and Poe bring beer, Hux brings snacks, and Ren contributes his famous late night French toast to anyone who makes it past two AM.

The one rule? Nobody sleeps over. Even if he hooks up with someone, they’re gone before morning. No use adding unnecessary risk to what is, at its core, a business event with lots of cheap booze.

The party won’t start until 10 or so, so he’s got about an hour to shower and get dressed. In his bedroom, he strips off his dinner clothes, tossing them on his bed and heading into his bathroom. He’s not vain, but if Rey sees him looking particularly sharp, it can hardly _hurt_ his chances.  

So he sets the water as cold as he can physically stand and lets the water flow over him. As he washes his hair, he tries not to think about Rey’s boobs in that god damned dress at dinner. He tries not think about how he’d felt her shiver when he touched her back. He tries not to think about the dip of her waist under the clingy fabric. He tries not to think about how fucking jealous he’d been when Poe had leaned over and whispered in her ear, how much he’d envied his colleague for the trust that got him that fucking close to her.

And then he gives up not thinking about her, and he thinks of the way she’d looked up at him, all lashes and shy smiles and wary looks. And then he thinks about the swell of her breasts again and how he could see the curve of them and the edge of a no-frills bra. And then it’s no good, he’s hard as hell for a girl who only trusts him about as far as she can throw him.

Kylo Ren refuses to jack off in the shower. He flatly refuses. But it’s tempting. _She’s_ tempting. He thinks of Hux and their current case. The drug ring. The anonymous circle of small time dealers loosely connected into a tenuous group. He thinks about the crime map of the greater Las Vegas area. He thinks about mob bosses in prison jumpsuits and that drugged out guy at Rey’s bar.

He leans his head against the tile, groaning, because everything leads back to fucking Rey. He steps out of the shower, still horny and frustrated, and wraps a towel around his torso before stepping into his bedroom.

Good fucking thing he’d bothered with the towel, because when he opens the door, Rey is standing there with a notebook in her arms looking startled as shit to see him.

Her lips part and she says, “Oh, shit, sorry!”

He grins, because it’s the surprised face, after all. She’s still in that fucking green dress with the slit up the leg and he still wants to throw her over the table and do obscene things to her.

He crosses to his dresser, barks out a “Turn around” while half hoping she doesn’t, and drops the towel on the floor to shove himself into boxers and his favorite pair of jeans. He turns around again. Her back is to him, damn it.

“Okay, turn around,” he says. Her eyes rake over his naked chest and he feels a ridiculous surge of pleasure that she’s checking him out. Careful, cautious, Rey. In his bedroom. Checking him out. Fucking beautiful.

“Can I help you?” he says.

She coughs. “Armitage told me to give you this.”

Ren snorts, because Hux’s dumb ass name never fails to crack him up. But Ren takes the dossier _Armitage_ has already shown him today, and tosses it wordlessly on the bed. Bless Hux and his asshat pranks. Bless him and his ginger haired nonsense. She’s looking at her feet, obviously waiting for him to dismiss her. He’s never seen her this subservient, and he wonders if he’s making her uncomfortable by standing this close without a shirt on.

But then she looks up at him through her lashes, and there’s no fear. Just a kind of playful skepticism that is attractive as all fuck.  

“Everyone calls him Hux,” Ren points out, trying to divert his thoughts.

Rey hesitates, then she finally blurts out, “The party’s at your house.”

“Yeah.”

“You didn’t tell me.”

“Nope.” He crosses his arms.

“Why didn’t you?” she murmurs, arching a brow.

“Because I wanted you to come.”  

Rey squirms. “Well, congrats, I’m here. Where’s your shirt?”

Ren walks to his closet and pulls a sweater off a hanger at random, tossing it to her.

He says, “A shirt, since it’s so important to you.”

She snorts a laugh, glancing between him and the sweater. “Fuck you. You knew what I meant.”

He grins. “Bothering you? Didn’t know you were such a Puritan.”

Rey lets out a disgruntled sigh. “It’s just… you look like a cartoon villain, and it’s freaking me out.”

He laughs, grabs his button down from where he’d left it on the bed, and slips his arms into it, flexing a little. Just to be a dick.  

“Better?” he murmurs as the fabric settles around his hips and he does the last button.

Rey relaxes, her eyes flitting over his whole body again. “Yeah. Well, I’d better, uh, get down there.”

She’s going to run.

He doesn’t know exactly how he knows this, maybe the way her eyes have started flitting from the door to the windows and back again like she’s plotting an escape route. But if she leaves he’s going to be pissed off for probably an entire week. He doesn’t think his staff can take another week of his sexual frustration, so it’s really in everyone’s best interest that he do something about this. About her. Ideally, _to_ her.

“Rey,” he murmurs. She looks back at him, skittish, still holding his sweater with white knuckles. “You know it’s okay, don’t you? If you leave or if you stay. Either way. It’s fine.”

Her eyes narrow, in suspicion maybe? “Of course it’s okay. I can go where I want to.”

“Yeah. But I want you to stay,” he murmurs, taking a step toward her. She doesn’t back away, which he’s counting as a success and praying to god he’s not about to fuck it up when he adds, “Just laying my cards on the table.”

Her voice is hoarse, but the sentence just trails off. “Oh.”

They’re inches apart, and he can see the dark circles, blue and lovely, that frame her eyes. Also her tits. Not that he’s looking. Someone ( _Finn_ ) starts playing Taylor Swift in the living room.

“I still owe you a good time, remember?” he purrs.

Rey tilts her head up to meet his gaze head on, and they just hover there, panting and uneasy in the low light of his bedside lamp. He likes how she looks in his house, all angles and out of place.

“I like your house,” she says.  

He shrugs. “Place to crash.”

“It’s amazing. You must make good money in the, uh, real estate business,” she rasps.

“Sometimes,” he says. _I would literally buy you a boat right now if you asked me._ “But It’s just stuff.”

“I would have thought you’d be into the, like, penthouse thing.”

“Where do you live, Rey?” he murmurs, because she’s trying to distract him with small talk. She looks startled.

“Near the bar,” she hedges, chewing on the corner of her lip.

“Can I come over sometime?” he says, pushing. Always pushing.

“No.” But she swallows, rubs her neck, and adds, “But I’ll stay for the party.”

“Then you should put that sweater on,” he says, and she looks down at her hands like she’s just noticing it. “I can see the goosebumps on your arms.”

Rey looks at her shoulders. Then, without meeting his gaze, she tugs his sweater on over her head. Her hair is messed up to all hell when she emerges again, but her cheeks are flushed. It feels like an enormous victory.

“Thanks, I was cold.”

“Right,” he says. “Got it.”

“Thanks.” Then she practically runs from the room as he leans against the doorframe, following her with his eyes until she’s all the way down the central staircase that swoops down in front of the foyer. He can hear other people in the living room now, and he hears Poe call her name.

Then she’s gone, and he nearly collapses against his doorframe with the release of the sexual tension. Fuck, this girl might actually kill him.  

X

God is merciful, apparently, because Rey wasn’t lying to him. She stays.

More accurately, she sits with Poe and Finn and lets herself be introduced to a lot people at the party with that practiced smile on her face. It’s a big party tonight, and he doesn't let her out of his sight for two seconds. Not that he needs to. Rey keeps close to Finn, and Ren realizes with grudging respect that Hux had been right: the friendship between those two is way deeper than he’d realized.

The thing that makes his house so ideal for parties is the open concept floor plan. The kitchen, living room, dining room, and front foyer are essentially one space, so Ren can see most people at all times. There’s usually a fire out back where the stoners hang out, but beyond that, he’s got a sightline on most people. Also helps that music carries well through the two story living room, he owns no sentimental items that could be destroyed, and his housekeeper can bleach the shit out of the concrete floors to eradicate any evidence.

Plus, he can pull anyone with a tale to tell or a tip to share into his office with little notice. And no one with half a brain would pick a fight in his house. _No one_.

So he’s not worried about her safety or anything, just his own sanity. Rey’s a pretty girl, and despite his better intentions he’ll be damned if he’s going to let some asshole come into his house, drink his booze, and hit on his girl. Fuck it, he’s past denying to himself that he wants her. That sweater has done more for his mental health than years of therapy.

He debates following her around like some kind of guard dog, but Rey seems tense enough without him looming over her. And, despite his baser desires, he’s trying to get her to _like_ him. So he looms at his kitchen counter instead, watching her while making small talk with the guests. He’s feeling a mixture of giddiness that she’s here and frustration that she’s not upstairs in his room, alone with him.

Poe and Finn are good hosts, but even he can see the two would rather be somewhere together. Rey smiles good naturedly at the two of them, and then she starts talking to a girl next to her who she apparently recognizes, based on her body language. Ren, mixing a drink for a backup dancer he used to sleep with, squints at her, trying to tell what Rey is saying. He knows it’s creepy, but he didn’t get where he is by respecting the privacy of conversation in a public space.

But the beat of the music is too loud, and people keep walking in front of the kitchen island and blocking his view, so he can’t get a good read. He gives up, glancing over at Rey while periodically while catching up with his dancer hookup. He met her on a job working security for a high profile headliner who he’s legally barred from ever speaking about.

The dancer’s just a friend at this point, and kind of an old one, actually. Which is the only reason he’s making her a drink himself instead of directing her to the drink table with the rest of the weridos who come here. She sits on the edge of the counter, swinging her legs as Ren makes her a cosmopolitan.

The dancer is saying, “So I’m like, fuck off, right? I’m not going to do that stunt without a wire. And the guy’s like- hey, Ren. You listening?”

He yanks his attention back to her, because he hadn’t been. “Sorry, just lost in thought.”

She raises a brow. “You were staring at that girl talking to Jessika over there.”

He glares at her. “Fuck off.”

She holds up “I’m innocent” hands. “Hey, don’t let me stop you. Why don’t you talk to her?”

And then Ren feels like a dick for snapping at her. He sets his lime down.

“I have talked to her. She’s skittish as all hell,” he grouses.

She looks past him at Rey. “Doesn’t look skittish now,” she says, sounding impressed. Ren looks back in time to see Jessika lean forward and press a kiss on Rey’s mouth.

Holy. Shit.

Someone across the room cheers, and Ren’s brain quietly short circuits.

The two break the kiss, leaning back away from each other on the couch and laughing. No, giggling. Christ, Rey is _giggling_. Where the fuck did Poe and Finn go? Why would the leave her alone? Does Rey even know this girl? Christ, what if she has feelings for someone else? Then Rey looks over and meets his eyes, giving him a sheepish smile as Jessika leans back and laughs again. Rey shrugs at Ren and says something else to Jessika. And then she’s getting to her feet and crossing the room to him as he scrambles to remember how to use his body like a normal person. What the fuck was he even doing ten seconds ago?

Rey reaches his side and peers up at him. She ignores his hookup entirely.

“Great party,” Rey says, a little flushed.

Hell, he’s a little flushed. Almost knocking over his cocktail shaker, he reaches for the mocktail he’d made for her a while ago. He’d delayed bringing it over because she was making _friends_ he’d thought. Nice, female friends. Not…whatever the fuck that was.

But he hands it to her, and she takes a long, greedy sip. It’s nothing fancy, just a Shirley Temple, but she looks up at him in awe.

“This is awesome.”

“You kissed Jessika,” he blurts out, his brain completely fucking useless.

Next to him, his dancer friend snorts a laugh, gives a very startled Rey a high five, and twirls around to saunter over to the rest of the dancers.

“See you later, Ren,” she calls over her shoulder.

Rey’s eyes narrow at her back.

“Friend of yours?” she says, a little coolly.

“You kissed Jessika,” he repeats, unable to move on, apparently.

Rey meets his eyes again and gives him that same sheepish smile. “Yeah. I’ve always wanted to kiss a girl.”

“How was it?” he blurts.

Rey taps her chin. “Well, you’ve kissed a girl before, haven’t you? It was like that.”

His brain still fuzzy, he turns back to his lime again and starts to zest it. He’s not making anything that calls for lime zest, but hell, zesting is a satisfying way to vent frustration. Rey watches for a second and then puts a hand on his bicep. He freezes at the touch, her hand warm on his skin. She’s _touching_ him. How many tiny victories is he going to get tonight?

“I met Jessika at the dress shop. She does costumes for a lot of the burlesque people, I guess? Anyway she asked me if I wanted to kiss her and I said, sure. But I don’t think it’s my scene,” she murmurs, glancing back at Jessika, who’s now talking to his former hookup. _Oh boy._

He looks back at Rey, and it occurs to him that, for the first time, she approached him. In a crowded place full of strangers, she’d come to him. No other woman could make him feel so happy about such a small triumph, but it’s different with her. She didn’t bolt into the night, she came over to talk to him.

“Oh,” he says.  

_Genius verbalization, Ren._

“Jessika’s really nice,” she adds. “She’s going to college.”  
There’s a trace of longing in her voice that he doesn’t miss. “That’s cool,” he murmurs. She looks up at him.

“I'm having a nice time,” she says, and she sounds a little surprised. She takes another drink of her Shirley Temple and lets out this little moan sound that has Ren seriously considering just picking her up and carrying her upstairs, potential gut wound be damned.

He takes her hand, and Rey stares at him like he’d started speaking Greek. But he just wraps his hand around hers and gently tugs her toward the back door.

“Come on,” he murmurs. “I want to show you the back yard.”

Looking a little bemused and clutching her Shirley Temple, Rey trails behind him as Ren shoves people out of their way to get to the big glass door in the back that leads to the backyard. It’s dark beyond his house, the craggy hill in the distance looming large. Ren imagines that he can see the Scavenger Bar and Grill in the distance, but he knows it’s just his imagination. Rey’s hand in his is warm. He can feel the cuff of his sweater brushing his palm.

The night air is crisp, and people mill around the fire pit he’d made out of a piece of scrap metal set on top of some stray boulders. The fire’s big tonight, and someone is burning what looks like a coffee table. He frowns, because this isn’t really a _bonfire_ type of evening. He might have even said something to the group of stoners staring at the fire, but Rey’s sudden stillness distracts him.

They’re still a few paces away from the fire, but she is rooted to the spot, her eyes locked on the dancing flames. He gets a sinking feeling in his gut at the naked emotion in her eyes. It’s not fear, he doesn’t think, but something else. She’s seeing something that is not here, is not now, but is somehow still happening. Ren knows that look.  

“Hey,” he murmurs. “You okay?”

She blinks. “I’m…not big into fire,” she whispers.

“Got it,” he murmurs. He’s still holding her hand, which has got to be a fucking miracle. Turning to the guys standing around the fire, he says, “Hey.” They all look up, their eyes widening as they see who’s speaking. He barks, “Kill the fucking fire.”

They jump into action, scrambling for their make shift fire pokers to shift the logs and rake the coals out into the sandy ground. With a crunch of burnt wood and a hiss of protest from, the fire collapses into the rocks below. Rey watches it, transfixed.

When the embers fade to intense glowing red, she nods at him, and Ren leads them back inside without another word.

He wants to pull her into a quiet room and ask her about what the hell just happened, but as soon as they get inside a voice cuts in, calling her name.  Rey’s head snaps up as a man Ren doesn’t recognize calls her name again. He’s drunk, that much is obvious, and stumbling over to her from across the room. Rey’s eyes narrow, and Ren can read the sudden tension in her body.

Then, fucking annoyingly, she bolts across the room to intercept him. The drunk has only made it halfway across his living room when she reaches him, and the light fixture hanging from the two story ceiling overhead makes the guy look drawn and haggard.

No, scratch that, he _is_ drawn and haggard. Ren can see that even from the distance of the back door. The guy smiles broadly at Rey, opening his arms and saying something. Rey keeps her voice low and quiet, but the guy doesn’t. Ren eavesdrops shamelessly, dismissing someone who comes up to talk to him with a shake of his head.

“You still working for-“ the guy talking to Rey says.

Rey cuts him off, her voice low and inaudible across the room. The guy’s eyes widen.

“Sorry, Jesus,” he grumbles. “But no offense, how was I supposed to know? Not like you have a social life.”

Rey takes a menacing step forward, one hand reaching into her jacket, and Ren makes an executive decision. No one is going to stab anyone at this party. Not even Rey. They haven’t even had a first date yet, for fuck’s sake, and for some reason, those two things seem related. Ren’s at her side in three strides, glaring at the guy over Rey’s shoulder.

“Easy there, James Bond,” he mutters to her.

Rey looks up at him, guilt etched on her face as her hand drops from her pocket.  “I’m sorry,” she murmurs, looking up at him like she’s done something wrong. Somehow, he doesn’t think she’s apologizing for reaching for the knife or for leaving the conversation mid-sentence. It seems like she’s trying to apologize for _existing_.

He frowns at her, disturbed by her apparent self-loathing, and she flinches from it like he’s raised a hand against her. Her reaction raises several new and pressing questions, but he can’t deal with that now.

The guy is slurring at Ren now. “You know Rey? I know Rey.”

Ren puts his hand on Rey’s shoulder and gently tugs her behind him so she’s well out of stabbing reach of her intended victim. He wants full access to his arms, and more than that, he wants Rey in a place where she’s not about to shank anyone. They’re both wired up on nerves and Rey’s leftover fear, which does nothing to help him control his simmering temper. He’s trying not to scare the shit out of her. Trying. Trying.

Ren keeps his voice low enough not to draw attention to himself. But only _just_.

“You know who I am?”

The guy’s eyes widen, and his fear is nothing like Rey’s. His fear feels _good_.

He says, “Everyone knows who you are.”

“You know who she is?” Ren says, gesturing back at Rey behind him. Rey makes an irritated noise but he hushes her, pretty much guaranteeing that he’s now the second person at this party Rey wants to shank.

The dude opens his mouth but Ren cuts him off.

Ren snaps, “No. You don’t know who she is. She’s none of your fucking business,” Ren growls. “You’ve never fucking seen her before. Get out of my house.”

He’s abruptly bored with the whole thing. Rey with a knife is way more interesting than anything else that could have happened tonight. The guy holds his hands up and backs away slowly.

“I don’t want any trouble.”

The man steals another glance at Rey, but Ren turns back to him, blocking his view. Rey is looking up at him with a mix of fear and annoyance on her features.

“Ren, I-” she says, her tone wary.

“Can I show you something?” he says, cutting her off. He needs to get her alone. Fuck everyone else. This night hasn’t gone the way he’d thought and it’s pissing him off. He didn’t bring her here for her shitty past to rear its head, and he’s more than a little unnerved by how close their circles apparently run. How has he never met her before? Who the hell was that guy? Why is she so fucking scared of fire? And behind it all, the nagging sense that this is connected to something else, some thread he hasn’t discovered yet.

But then she cocks her head and kind of smiles, and those questions just die in his brain like she’s reached into his skull and yanked them out. Thank _Christ_.

“Is it a dead body?” she says, eyeing him.

“No,” he says emphatically. “It’s better.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

>   
>  I fucking love writing party scenes. Thank you for your patience with my slowburn inclinations and the lovely comments! They make me want to write more and better and faster. I have completely given up on my Sunday posting schedule and now post whenever I want in the week. Seven days is too long.  
>   
> By the way, wanted to shout out this amazing podcast for any of you who like writing. It's called [How Story Works](https://chipperish.com/podcasts/how-story-works/) by Lani Diane Rich and it really helped me with my craft. Each podcast breaks down elements of story with incredible clarity.  
>   
> Also, does anyone know of any good arranged marriage fics?  
>   
> [PS. you can find me on Tumblr.](https://violetwilson.tumblr.com/)  
> 


	5. Digging

**Chapter 5.**

**Digging.**

_Ren._

She nods, and without thinking about it too hard, he takes her by the hand and leads her out of the loud-ass living room and down to the hallway to the laundry room and garage. He locks his garage on party nights; last thing he fucking needs is some drunk asshole ruining his collection, but he doesn’t let go of her hand as he types the code in to unlock the door.

“Is this like, some kind of dungeon?” she says, and he turns to look at her as the door clicks open. She looks a little nervous, which makes sense. Most people don’t lock their garages from the outside.

“I’m not going in there,” she adds, as if to confirm his suspicions.

Getting Rey alone seems to set her off. She’s fine in groups and then the second they’re alone it’s like there’s a different chemistry between them that she feels and is afraid of. Or maybe she just doesn’t like being alone with him. Who the hell knows?  

“Not a dungeon. I’ll leave the door propped open,” he says, kicking the doorstop over to prop the heavy security door open. “It’s just my garage.”

She peers around him into the dark room, and he steps inside and flips on the lights. His motorcycles do for her what countless reassuring words never could. Her eyes widen and she pads into the room on bare feet, taking in his three motorcycles gleaming in the light from his workbench. Their long shadows graze Rey’s toes as she walks up to them and reverentially runs her fingers along the leather. One by one.

“Wow,” she murmurs. “So beautiful.”

Ren, watching from the door, takes in the curve of her back under the thick material of his sweater, the lines of her strong legs under that fucking green dress, the delicate pads of her fingers. The dull roar of his party fades into the background as he listens, rapt, to the sound of her breathing. His garage is warm, but the heat he feels is all coming from her.

“These are just beautiful,” she murmurs, peering at all three with the eye of an art collector.

“Yeah,” he whispers. Not wanting to disturb her but desperately for her to turn around and look at him.

“All yours?” she says, finally turning to grin at him. Her hair falls down to frame her face where she’d been leaning to inspect the engines, and she’s so fucking beautiful it kind of feels like he’s having a heart attack.

“All mine,” he murmurs, taking her in. Her eyes gleam.  

Feeling bold, he crosses to her side and crouches down next to her, breathing in the smell of her. Cinnamon and sweat, he decides. She’s bent at the waist and Ren shakes off images of bending her over his workbench, pushing up that green dress, and taking her hard and fast. Right here. His garage is already his favorite room in house, so why not christen it with her?

She crouches too, peering at the engine with appraising eyes, and he’s fucking glad she isn’t actually a mind reader. She pushes up the sleeves of his sweater to touch a component on the engine.

“You know about bikes,” he states.

She eyes him, then focuses back in on the engine. He can see the pink puckered edges of the cigarette burns on her arms, and, further up in the space where the sweater pulls away from her skin and sits low, he sees the ghost of a different burn. Fainter. Maybe older. It forms a straight line across her shoulder, like someone pressed a burning hot fire poker to her skin. Fucking hell. He wonders again about her fear of fires. It’s connect to the burns, obviously, but how?

“A little. You hear stuff about it at the bar, you know?” she says offhandedly, and he has to remember what it was he’d asked her.

“Tell me about the fire thing,” he says.

Rey looks up at him, a defiant tilt to her chin. “I’m not _scared_ of fire. I just don’t like it.”

“Did your house burn down?’ he says, praying wild guesses might make her open up.

She chews on her lip again. “I’ll answer that if you tell me something in return.”

He doesn’t like this shit at all, so he stands up and walks over to his work bench so she can’t see his face.

“What do you want to know?”

She hesitates, which is his first clue he’s in trouble.  
“How do you know the people at this party?” she says, and he turns around to look at her, because god damn it if she isn’t smart. She’s still crouched, still wary.

He tells her the truth. “They’re mostly colleagues, in some way or another.”

Then she smiles. “Colleagues?”

He shrugs. “I have a legitimate business. Security stuff. Private investigation.”

“Legitimate businesses don't send people running away from you with a flick of your wrist,” she points out.

He snorts a laugh. “Maybe it’s my natural charisma at work. But now you answer my question: what’s the deal with you and fires?”

Rey sighs, getting to her feet and brushing the dirt off her bare knees. His sweater comes down to past her waist and she tugs at it. “A long time ago, there was a fire where I was living. I’ve just never…liked it since.”

“You were in foster care?” he guesses, and she looks up at him with a sharpness in her eyes.

“You looked me up?” she murmurs, and he can see the traces of anger.  

“No,” he says, truthfully. “I could, but I won’t,” he says, kind of defensive now because she still doesn’t trust him, for all her sweater-wearing and Shirley temple drinking. She’s not his, and he’s an idiot if he thinks otherwise. She still has that cagey look on her face, and he decides that he’s fucked as it is so he may as well make it worse.

Crossing over to her, he says, “Tell me something else. Who was that guy in there?”

Her frown turns into an outright glower. “Just some guy from the bar.”

“You little liar,” he murmurs.

Her eyes flash. “ _You’re_ hardly one to-”

He cuts her off, because he wasn’t trying to piss her off.  “It wasn’t an accusation. Just putting it out there that if you wanted to tell me the truth, you could.”

She purses her lips. “Your secrets must be pretty straightforward if you think like that.”

“I'm a simple guy,” he says, shrugging like this is casual for him. Like he doesn’t give a shit. “I see a girl with mysterious past and strange bruises, and I get curious. I ask questions.”

She’s only a few steps away from him, and he reaches out to run his fingers over the edge of the scar where it bisects with the top of her spine. He feels her tremble just from that and he drops his hand.

Her voice is ragged, “Don’t. Don’t think you know anything.”

Ren takes a step forward, the space between them evaporating even as quickly as his temper rises. Her back is to the open door. She could bolt at any instant and he wouldn’t stop her. Probably couldn’t stop her. But god damn, he wants to kiss her. This is all so fucked, and he wants to kiss her so fucking bad.

“I learn quick. For example,” he purrs, lifting a hand up to cup her cheek, and she doesn't push him off. Her breath hitches in her throat. “I think you like to be kissed. It’s a hunch I have, because you kissed Jessika in my living room and thought I wouldn’t do anything about it.”

Rey shivers, shifting her weight from foot to foot. But she says nothing.

“I could kiss you better than she could,” he murmurs, running a thumb across her lip. “Much better.”

Rey licks her lips, closing her eyes and inhaling slowly. Ren reaches out and puts his hand on her waist, pulling her closer. The feeling of her body on his is exquisite. Something in him is aching for way more than sex, and it’s almost a physical pain.

Her eyes flutter open, and she peers at him with a mixture of defiance and desire. It’s too naked to ignore, and he’s too close to her to be fooled by her blistering façade. She feels this attraction. Her hands twitch at her side as traces his hands down the side of her face and neck, his thumbs touching her collarbone and the hollow at the base of her neck.  

“I would make you feel good,” he whispers, pulling her closer with his other hand on her hip. He holds her in his hands, totally vulnerable in a way he’s not fool enough to think comes easy to her. He’s painfully hard but he has to take this so slow. Rey trembles in his hand like a trapped bird.

“I like you, Rey,” he murmurs, circling a freckle on her neck with the pads of his fingers, dragging them up to just behind her ear and back behind her neck to hold her there, fragile and perfect and staring up at him with like she’s forgotten her damn name. Her eyes are hooded and glassy as she leans into his touch, hissing a breath out as his hand on her waist pulls her tighter against his erection.

He can’t go any further until he hears her fucking speak, but the minute she gives him the word he has every intention of locking his fucking garage door and taking her here and now, hearing her make those little panting breaths in his ear.  

At the brink of his self-control, he murmurs her name, and it’s half a moan and half a prayer.

“Rey, what do you want?”

Her eyes open and a strange look flits across her features. A flash of something desperate. She presses herself backward with two hands on his chest, and letting her out of his arms feels like physical pain. She’d been _right there_. He could have kissed her, he could have had her.

Ren takes a breath, watching her withdraw and compose herself. Watching the walls he’s seen behind come down again.

“That was really something,” she says, and her voice is unsteady. “But I’ve got to go.”

“No,’” he says, taking a step forward. All he can feel is the imbalance in the room. She was in his arms and now she’s not, and it’s wrong. She’s not where she should be. It’s wrong and he can _fix_ it.

“I’ve got work,” she says flatly, something like panic in her voice. Fuck. Not the plan.

“Quit,” he growls.

She crosses her arms. Her tone is flat and emotionless when she says, “I can’t. I’ve tried.”

Ren’s scope of thought has diminished to exactly one point: Rey belongs in his arms. It felt right to hold her like nothing else has.

“Fuck work,” he growls. “This is a party.”

“ _Everything’s_ work,” she says, and she points over his shoulder with her eyes narrowed. He glances over his shoulder and sees the box of .45 caliber bullets he’s done a shit job of hiding.  

Rey gives him one lingering look, and her mouth opens like she’s going to say something else, but then she takes a step backward. Then she yanks his sweater off, ruining her hairdo, and he’s to her before she can hand it to him.

“Thank you,” she says, holding it out.

“Don’t,” Ren growls. “Keep it.”

She raises a brow. “No.”

“If you're gonna leave, I won’t stop you,” he says. “But so help me god, put that fuckin’ sweater on.”

Her grip on the fabric tightens. “You said I could leave,” she whispers.

He could break something he’s so pissed he’d said that. But of course, she _can._

“You can,” he murmurs. “But I never said I’d play fair.”

She shakes her head, takes another step back with a stricken look on her face and he’s right there with her, advancing. He knows his mistake immediately: he shouldn’t have reached out to take her hand. He should have taken about five steps backward, given her the space to come to him, because that’s how it has to be with her.

But instead he reaches out for her and Rey turns around and _runs_ out the door.

He has the presence of mind not to chase after her like a fucking psychopath, but only just. She’s gone. Slipped out of his damn fingers for the third time, and all he can think about is that she’d come so close to trusting him. He’d held her, touched her, murmured her name, felt the undeniable chemistry between them.

Left alone with his arousal and his frustration, Ren paces around the room once. Twice.

There’s only one thing he can do, really. He pulls up a case file at random, looks at the next action guy who needs to be brought in for questioning, and gets on his bike. In the absence of anything else to do, Ren gets the fuck to work.

X

_Rey._

When Rey was little, she lived in a cupboard in Plutt’s underground command center. It was a broom closet, really, just like in Harry Potter. She had an actual room, but that room didn’t have a lock. The closet did, and some luxuries are worth a little discomfort. She hadn’t hesitated to move her stuff in there and bolt the door. And it wasn’t like anyone really cleaned that place anyway.

In dreams, she sometimes returns to that closet with her posters and her stolen books. She remembers everything about that space. Mostly, she remembers what the door of her closet had looked like as she ran by it that night she burned the whole place down. _Everything_. The seedy gambling room, the store house with the cocaine in it, the meeting room where Plutt managed his shitty, small empire of petty thieves and druggies.

Rey had thought that would be the end of it. That she was free. She had paid for her freedom, hadn’t she? Hadn’t she earned it?

She hadn’t.

Rey thinks that the original place was sort of Plutt’s pride and joy, and when it had burned, something in him had twisted even further. As a kid, Plutt wasn’t the worst person in the world. He’d been neglectful and made her witness acts of violence, but he never hit her or anything. He just let other people shove her around. He’d given her a knife when she turned thirteen. She knows he never meant to hurt her, per se, it was just that he didn’t think of her at all outside of his use to her.

His work obsessed him. Rey thinks Plutt must’ve had big plans for his underground casino and drug running empire, once. Maybe something like a speakeasy, some place with class and dignity. Maybe he had honest dreams once, but if he ever did, those dreams had burned up long ago.

But all he’s ever been to her is a high functioning addict with the presence of mind not to give into the drugs too much to lose control. If he’d only become slightly more addicted, then maybe his mind would have started to rot enough for her to slip out of the city. But no such luck.

Rey reflects on this as she gets off the bus at the sight of Plutt’s newest hidehout, the one that has served as his center of operations for more than four years. Four long years. This location is a block of suites in a dilapidated strip mall on the edge of the strip that Plutt rents out to a series of seedy tourist traps constructed as much to pick pockets and fleece desperate gamblers as to make money off rent.

The front rooms hide the actual business, which takes place behind the storefronts in the series of repurposed back rooms and basements built to support the storefronts. Plutt turned them into a combination store room, governmental center, and money laundering facility. It's kind of impressive, actually, how much shittiness he manages to cram into one space. 

All in total, Rey’s not sure she can say which of his various enterprises makes Plutt the most money, just that they’re all seedy, and they all cater to the desperate.

All of this, Rey understands. She was born into this life by drunken parents who had the discourtesy to overdose and leave her alone in Plutt’s care. Plutt who used her to pick up cash and drop off product to people just as hungry and desperate as she was. Unkar Plutt who keeps her from having a functional life. Whatever she felt for him as a kid, everything had changed after she tried to get free. And failed spectacularly.

Maybe something about coming straight here from the arms of Kylo Ren, avenging angel and terrifyingly hot man of her dreams, just makes it worse. She stares at the shitty strip mall, knowing she needs to bite the bullet and go inside, take the next job, and the one after that, until she can get out. Get free. Or at least get somewhere else. 

But it’s hard, and she’s pissed off and antsy and worked up from her almost kiss. Instead of going inside, she sits down on the bus bench and takes out the folder she’d lifted from Kylo Ren’s room. It’s the same one Hux had given her to take up to Kylo, and she’d known immediately she was going to have to steal it before she ran off, because just a glance at the briefing told her that it was probably talking about Plutt.

She yanks the folded paper out of her bra, relieved to finally have it no longer poking her in the tit, and flips through the two pages for the second time tonight.

It’s a dossier type of thing. There are a few names in it, an overview of the suspected activities of the group referred to in the file as “unknown organization 21.” The number makes her head reel, but the classification is even worse: _Criminal ring, petty._ She snorts a laugh, because that's exactly what it is. Petty. 

She looks up at the sky, wishing for stars. On the one hand, it’s a relief to know that _someone_ is on to him. Plutt’s organization, Ren’s petty criminal ring number 21, has flown under the radar through sheer force of mediocrity. Plutt doesn’t’ make enough money to draw all that much attention attention, and it’s easy to pay off the occasional cop. The FBI is supposed to deal with organized crime, but Vegas has always played by its own set of crooked rules. Which is great when you want to get out of a parking ticket, but less awesome when you're, say, an orphan with no money. 

But Plutt must be doing something to attract the attention of a group like the First Order. 

It’s almost a death sentence for Plutt, because if he loses access to his supply, there’s nothing standing between him and his suppliers. What she’s less certain of is where that would leave her. She shouldn’t be kissing Kylo Ren, that’s for damn sure. What’s he going to think of her when he finds out? Does he already know? Her name isn’t in the file, which is encouraging, but neither is Plutt’s, which is less so.

The whole thing is agitating. She needs to cut ties with Ren, Poe, and Finn. She knows this, but it feels incomprehensible and just so _unfair._ The whole point of moving out was to get herself free, and it’s amounted to nothing.

Rey seethes outside, trying to reign herself in, to be practical, to be careful and thoughtful.

She knows better than to approach him when she’s in one of these reckless moods, but she’s got to do a pickup tonight and she can’t put it off any longer. Her contact at Ren’s party had made that clear enough. No matter how far she stretches her leash, he’ll never let her really get all the way out. 

Not that he has to remind her that he could ruin her life with a phone call. She can’t forget for an instant the threats he holds her under, the ones that keep her from sprinting away from this city and starting over.

Kicking a rock on the ground, she watches it skid across the cracked asphalt and spin out until it hits the shiny chrome wheel of Plutt’s black Mercedes. Rey glares at the rock, the car with its shitty custom grill, and the cars that drive by them on the street behind her. The next bus approaches, and she sighs, walking toward the door.

Rey thinks about Kylo Ren and his big house and his warm garage and his hot kisses, all strong and safe and seductive, and feels an acute kind of self-pity that she rarely indulges in. She wanted to stay, damn it. She wanted to stay there, with him. Run her hands on his abs, breathe in the smell of him, and make him get her, like, five more of those pink drinks.  

But she can’t. Not yet. Maybe someday, when Unkar Plutt is dead and she can get out without ending up in prison or dead. It’s just for now. Only temporary. In the grand scheme of time, this is small. Petty. A grin flashes on her face, unbidden. One of her only assets its a sense of humor, and she gets it where she can. 

The door to the storefront swings open with an incongruously cheery tinkle of a bell.

Tim sticks his head out and snaps, “Rey, quit dragging your ass. Get inside.”

“That's what your mom said last night,” she mutters to the door, giving Vegas one last glance before she goes inside to collect her next assignment. As she reaches for the handle of the door, Rey imagines sealing her feelings for Kylo up in a black silk box and setting the box down in the dark closet bedroom of her youth, nothing but the glint of a silky reflection showing before she closes the door in her mind and locks it up tight.

If she’s lucky, maybe it’ll keep.

X

Plutt is angry at her, which is not surprising considering her flagrant disobedience lately.

She stands in front of him in the front room of his hideout where everyone congregates. In more abstracted moods, Rey imagines that Plutt’s operation has the air of a Medieval court about it. Plutt is the gouty, addled Henry the 8th type, and the courtiers are the people lining up to buy drugs. Or sell them. She’s not sure where she would fit in, exactly. Probably a dog on a very long leash.

He lets her a lot of slack and occasionally sees fit to yank her savagely back, choking her. His grip seems especially tight as he glowers at her from the incongruously floral loveseat he sits on when administering his small, shitty drug empire. It would only take a few calculated moves from law enforcement to topple the whole thing, and yet here they are, still functioning. Plutt runs it from his armchair, a former boxing champion with a permanently disabled leg that causes him constant pain. When he walks, it is heavily and with much groaning. Rey’s seen him pop pain killers like candy, and she looks for signs of it now. He’s been getting worse; anyone can see that.

The thought is both upsetting and cheering, like burning a meal you never really wanted to eat and deciding to get pizza instead. 

Rey taps her foot, but he drags it out, taking notes on the yellow legal pads he constantly writes on. She’s never seen them up close, but she knows he keeps careful tabs on her comings and goings. There’s a file in his office, or his computer, or in his house with a lifetime’s worth of her misdeeds. And that’s really the kicker, isn’t it? She needs to destroy those records, those photographs, but she can’t fucking _find_ them. You'd think a guy like Plutt would be a better record keeper, but she's never been able to dig them up.

Finally, he sets the pad face down on the floor and glowers at her.

“Been ignoring me, princess?” he drawls, like she’s not been standing in front of him for 60 long seconds. His fingers twitch on the couch. What had Kylo called her? James Bond? She almost smiles.

She knows better than to rise to the bait. “I’ve been busy at the bar.”

“Yes, your bar. I should pay you a visit sometime,” Plutt says.

“What do you need?” Rey says flatly, keeping her expression blank and neutral.

“I’ve got a payment for a distributor, and I can’t have one of these idiots do it.”

Rey loathes product people. But all she says is, “When? Where?”

He waves a dismissive hand. “The Wynn’s high stakes room. You’ll need a dress, they don’t let street rats in.” Then, just to be a ass, he adds, “Or arsonists, I imagine.”

Rey grits her teeth, sending a silent prayer of thanks to Kylo for insisting she take his sweater. “I need fifty for the dress.”

He narrows his eyes. “Don’t give me that. You’ll get a dress and you’ll get out of my sight.”

Rey thinks about how Ren had looked at her in the green dress and wonders if that would work. 

Rey nods, picking up the envelope on the floor near his feet with her name on it. She has to lift a few empty bottles off it, and when she stands up she looks Plutt over with renewed interest. He typically doesn’t drink. If she's lucky, maybe he'll drink so much that he'll catch on fire. Which, given their history, would have a satisfying element of symmetry to it. 

“Can I go?” she says tonelessly.

Plutt steeples his hands together and eyes her. “You’re not getting any ideas, are you?” Rey stiffens. It’s been a while since he’s given her this speech. “Because you know I’ll ruin your life, don’t you?”

Rey nods. “I know.”

But it feels like sandpaper on her tongue.

“Making friends with First Order officers is a stupid thing to do,” Plutt says casually.

Rey forces herself to hold very still as her body temperature drops a few degrees.

“Tim saw you with them,” Plutt says coolly.

Rey clenches her fist. Fuck Tim. If she could kill people just with her brain, Tim would be a pile of ashes on the floor. The feeling is so visceral that she physically recoils from it, startled by her own anger. _Jesus. Not healthy thoughts._

For a second, Rey considers the dossier file in her bra. She could tell Plutt about it, and maybe earn some good grace. Claim she was doing recon work. But she recoils from the idea as quickly as it occurs to her. She might not be able to be friends, but she’s sure as shit not going to sell them out.

When she doesn't say anything, Plutt adds, “They’re a highly organized gang.”

“It’s a private security firm,” she says, and the edge in her voice surprises even her.

“They’re trash pseudo cops. Barely above thugs,” Plutt rasps.

“They won’t come for us,” Rey insists, hating that she’s included in his group and loving the feeling of lying through her teeth to him.

Plutt leans back. “Don’t think I don’t know. You’d be dead if I thought you were working for them. It’s in your best interest to keep them away from what we do here. Unless you like going to prison.”

Rey clenches her eyes shut, screws her courage to the sticking place, and turns around to walk the hell away before she does something unwise. Plutt’s laughter at her back clings to her ears and throat as she pushes out the front door. The cheery bell above the door jangles into the night sky and Rey takes in several cooling breaths as she puts ten, twenty, thirty feet between her and the epicenter of human shittiness. Realizing that her clenched fists have nearly crushed the check she’s supposed to deliver, she hastily flattens it back out against the top of her thigh.

Walking angrily back to the bus stop, Rey does the same exercise she has always done when she feels overwhelmed.

She watches the formation Grand Canyon.

In her imagination, she zooms out from where she’s standing until she can see the whole city, the whole state, the whole American Southwest as it must have looked once, millions of years ago.

The Pacific tectonic plate is overpowered by the North American plate, and the two forces lift the entire state of Colorado as the plates grind against each other, driving huge piles of earth into the sky that become The Rocky Mountains, towering and huge in her mind’s eye. Beneath her, a stream of water tries to escape the carnage by digging into the earth, burying itself deeper and deeper, trying to get home. A thin silver knife of water that carves itself through the curvature of the earth.

The canyon stretches around this water, widening to as far apart as 18 miles as erosion and tributary rivers branch off and onto the main flow, carrying truck sized boulders and fallen rock down the river with it. The canyon widens and widens, a gash that spreads into a breach the size of a city, a metropolis. Earth gives way to tumbling nothingness and the evidence of the violence is pushed downstream with the water.

In her mind, Rey stands at the edge of this great geological maelstrom happening in the theater of millennia. She is utterly alone. This great gash forming in the land is not even a hundred miles away from where she stands right now, and it is as permanent as the Rocky Mountains, which is to say it is not permanent all, but constantly changing. As the Grand Canyon takes shape before her, she draws in a deep breath and imagines a sunrise over the silver stream of water, and she is comforted.

Then out of fucking nowhere she thinks about Kylo Ren, shirtless in his bedroom with those fuck me eyes and his playful banter, and sort of wants to throw herself into oncoming traffic. Damn, since when did that single image become more interesting than her most personal and longstanding metaphor?

She kind of hates him for it.

Her bus pulls up and Rey sighs as she makes her weary way home. Resolving that she’s going to do this job, go home, and definitely, absolutely not text the contact number she has of his from the dossier. She’s not going to call him and tell him about the Grand Canyon. She’s not going to tell him anything.

The canyon in her mind flashes bright silver as the lights from her approaching bus throw her shadow behind her.

Rey yanks the paper out from her bra as she gets on and runs her thumb over his name at the top right corner, wondering if she should add own name to the list of people she’s lying to lately.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I swear to god I'm going to stop teasing you guys soon. 
> 
> Gajeely on Tumblr made an AMAZING illustration of the garage hand grab scene (subtitle: ren u fuckt up dude) which you should go look at [ right here!](http://gajeely.tumblr.com/post/170857878878/she-shakes-her-head-takes-another-step-back-with) So cool, and she takes commissions if you have art needs!
> 
> [PS. you can see the mood board I made for this story on my Tumblr! It's my first one and I am absurdly pleased with myself for having done the literal bare minimum.](https://violetwilson.tumblr.com/)  
> 


	6. Back and forth.

**Chapter 6.**

**Back and forth.**

_Rey._

Rey taps her fingers against her phone, hesitating as she stretches out on her narrow bed.  She has to send this text. She knows she has to send this text. But she doesn’t _want_ to, so she tugs his sweater a little tighter around the exposed sink of her neck and chews on her bottom lip.

Then she closes her eyes and hits send.

 **_Rey_ ** _: Thank you for inviting me to your party. We shouldn’t talk anymore._

Rey throws herself back on her bed and lets out a long groan. There. She did it. But when his response comes a few minutes later, the text tone has her sitting bolt upright and lunging for her phone like all her previous resolutions to ignore him have never happened.

 **_Ren_ ** _: So you texted me for the first time ever to tell me we shouldn’t text anymore?_

She snorts a laugh in spite of herself and sits up on her elbows. She repeats her previous mantra about not texting him again, but her thumbs move and then she hits send. Whoops.

 **_Rey_ ** _: I just can’t get involved in anything, and it’s not fair to lead you on._

His response is instant, and it sends a high school thrill through her whole body to see his name pop up.

 **_Ren_ ** _: You’ve never led me on. You were pretty clear from the beginning. And I think I’ve also made myself clear about my intentions toward you._

Oh. She’s _so_ fucked.

 **_Rey_ ** _: Then why’d you try and kiss me?_

 **_Ren_ ** _: Because I wanted to kiss you. Keep up, sweetness._

Rey sets her phone down on the floor, because what the fuck is she supposed to say to that? She rolls over, resolutely ignoring her phone on the floor next to her.

She doesn’t have anything to do today until the drop-off, and she’d had vague ideas of swinging by the bar before it opened to get to some lingering tasks done before anyone else arrived. Her wall calendar tells her the fire alarm batteries are due for changing in a week, but she wants to get ahead. Can’t be too careful with shit like that, and she may as well test the extinguishers while Phas isn’t around to give her weird looks.

Her phone glints accusingly at her in the weak afternoon sunlight steaming through her window.

She caves, because she is weak, and picks up her phone. The text waiting for her makes her groan out loud.

 **_Ren_ ** _: Have you eaten today?_

 **_Rey_ ** _: Yes._

 **_Ren_ ** _: What are the odds that you’re lying to me? I’m not a gambling man, but I’d put the odds at something like 100%._

 **_Rey_ ** _: Fine. I’m eating after work._

 **_Ren_ ** _: Is that before or after you never text me again?_

 **_Rey_ ** _: After, for sure._

His response is instant this time.

 **_Ren_ ** _: Perfect, that leaves us just enough time to get dinner._

She tosses her phone so it skids across her crap carpet and slides to where she can’t reach it.

X

Rey goes to the drop off in her green dress, and it’s a thrill to tell the agent at the door that she’s expected. She walks through the slick high stakes room, past the bar at the far end and the low tables where tastefully dressed men and women engaged in the world’s oldest game.

She keeps her gaze straight ahead, not eager to attract any unwelcome attention.

The private rooms are off to one side, and she goes to the one she’s been directed to.

Dopheld Mitaka stands up politely when she enters, and she smiles at him as they shake hands. He’s one of the polite ones, but this is, ultimately, a business deal. She cuts to the chase and hands over the check without comment.

The private rooms are nearly silent except for the low beat of a muted song playing, and in the dramatic overhead lights, Rey feels like a secret agent. She wishes she had a drink in a fancy glass, and she thinks idly of the drink Ren made for her.

Mitaka looks at the check with real scrutiny on his pinched features. Rey’s met with Mitaka a few times, and she’s always wondered how someone like him ended up in this business. He’d been an art inspector at one point, he’d said. Mitaka scrutinizes the check, looking for signs of forgery or carelessness. The private gambling rooms off the high-stakes room are prized for their highly insulated walls and excellent security, and Rey sits in the silence as he studies it. She’s hungry, and she needs to go grocery shopping. 

After a minute, he holds it up to the light and Rey rolls her eyes at the dramatics. “It’s fine, Mitaka.”

“You and I both know that’s not a guarantee,” he says.

Rey blinks. “Has there been a problem?”

Mitaka sets the check down. “Not today. But Plutt must know he’s on thin ice if he sent you. You should cut your losses and break with him.”

Rey almost laughs. “That’s always been the plan.”

Mitaka lifts a brow. “You know my employer would hire you. Everyone needs a reliable courier.”

Something in Rey’s chest starts to do that squirming, uncomfortable feeling that always shows up when she’s in dangerous situations that don’t involve violence. Violence is frightening after the fact. Political moves are dangerous while they’re happening.

She’s not sure which she hates more.

Mitaka withdraws a card from his jacket pocket hands it to her, kind of smiling in that nervous way of his.

“Here.”

Rey takes the simple white card with a phone number on it and eyes it dubiously. Part of her wants to hold it up to the light like Mitaka had done, but she knows that would be next-level petty. And though she doesn’t know who Mitaka works for, exactly, she’s smart enough to know she doesn’t want to mess with them. 

“Thanks, I’ll think about it,” she lies.

Mitaka stands. “You could make a lot more money.”

Rey nods woodenly. Fucking suppliers.

They shake hands and Mitaka says mutters something about sinking ships as he walks past her. Rey follows, ignoring Mitaka and glancing down at her phone as the door to the private room closes with a mechanical click. There are two texts waiting for her, sent about five minutes apart.

 **_Ren_ ** _: I didn’t know you liked to gamble._

 **_Ren_ ** _: Feel like taking a risk?_

Rey’s eyes snap up, scanning the room. How could she have missed him? Her eyes roam around, looking, looking. But he’s not here. Could it have just been coincidental? An improbable turn of phrase?

Rey wonders what happens to people who ignore Kylo Ren. She glances down at the white card and wonders what will happen to _her_ if she keeps this up.  Rey shoves her phone in her pocket, deciding that Mitaka is right. Plutt is in over his head, and she can’t afford to keep doing this. The risks are too high, and if he goes to the cops, then he goes to the cops. It’s better than ending up in a backroom freezer or something like that.

Rey shoves the phone in her bra, not caring how rude it is, and power walks out of the room.

X

 _Ren_.

He’s on an assignment the next time he sees her. He’s following that lead about the crime ring pushing tainted product onto the market. Their client is a high powered business executive type with sketchy motives and a shadowy past, but that’s about all the know about him except that his money’s good.

Ren’s still frustrated they’ve not been able to pin anything down, but the group seems to operate in fits and starts at random, flying below the radar through sheer shittiness in record keeping. Ren’s sure they keep offline files exclusively, because how the fuck else has no one heard of them?

He can’t figure it out, but he’s got a meeting with the client’s agent at the Wynn. He’s seated at a table in the high stakes room, which his boring as all shit since he flatly refuses to gamble. But the mystery client pays for his drinks, and Ren rarely gets an excuse to wear his favorite suit, so it’s not the _worst_ job.

He’s sitting at the bar nursing a gin and tonic when he sees her across the room, walking across the dimly lit space like she owns it. Or at least like she works it, which is a close second. She doesn’t see him, probably because he’s in a shadowy corner while wearing all black, and anyway it’s not like she’s expecting him.

An alarm is ringing in his head. The odds of this are fucking astronomical, but he’s never sure when it comes to her.

She’s done something to the silk dress, because it is strapless now and drapes over her shoulders like she’s pinned it in place. She’s wearing makeup and she walks over to one of the private gaming rooms, looking as radiant as any woman he’s ever seen. And then she’s in the room and the door shuts behind her.

She still hasn’t replied to his text, so he sends her another and hopes she’ll come out again, eyes blazing and furious like he likes. But she doesn’t, and her restraint is irritating, because this would be so much easier if she didn’t fucking have it.

Across the room, Poe enters the high stakes room with a stack of chips in his hands, because Poe Dameron is just fucking good at things. Including gambling. He sets the chips on the bar next to him and raises a brow.

“So, where’s our guy?” Poe says in an undertone.

Ren glances to the door Rey has slipped through. “Not sure.”

“No show, you think?”

Ren shakes his head. “Not likely.”

Poe nods, trusting his instincts in a way that has resulted from nearly five years of partnership, and lifts his phone to his ear.

“Finn, we got eyes in the high stakes room?” Poe says. He frowns. “Ah, shit. Okay.”

Ren looks back to the door, and then back at his phone. She hasn’t answered his texts, so he sends her one more, just to drive it home. He can’t decide which is better: catching her in the act of something, or knowing the information and walking away with it. Biding his time.

Poe hangs up. “Finn says contact’s rescheduled meeting for the high-roller suite. 275.”

Ren nods, and they get up. He debates barging into Rey’s room, but he’s learned his lesson for last time. She has to come to him. He has to be fucking patient if he wants her to stay, and he does want her to stay. So Ren and Poe walk out of the high stakes room and head to the high-roller suite to hash it out.

When they get to the elevator, Ren turns to Poe.

“Tell me what you know about Rey,” he says.

Poe makes a thoughtful noise, unfazed as ever. “She’s a local. Grew up in foster care.”  
“Runaway?” he guesses.

“I’m not sure. She doesn’t ever talk about it.”

“Are all the files still with CPS or something?” he growls, confused how Poe doesn’t know this about her. How could anyone meet her and not immediately need to know everything about her?

His voice is calm. “I don’t know, I’ve never looked into it.”

“Why the hell not?” he snaps, unreasonably irritated.

“Because we’re not friends like _that_ , and anyway she wouldn't like it.”

 “Fuck that,” he growls. “She’s in trouble.”

“And you want to get involved?” Poe guesses. His eyes narrow and he rubs his stubble, and Ren remembers that Poe has a kid sister somewhere who he is very, very protective of. The elevator arrives and they get into it, a silence falling between them.

Ren sighs. Poe will never agree to help him unless he agrees with his motives.

“I like her,” he says tersely. “I want to help.”

There’s a beat of silence as the elevator starts to move. And then, his voice rising in volume, Poe says, “You _like_ her?”

“It’s more like I can’t… I just can’t let it rest. I can’t let her get away, not when she’s…”

“When you like her?” Poe completes, grinning.

He feels immediately pathetic but tries not to compromise his dignity.

“Something like that.”

“You have feelings for her,” Poe accuses, his tone a mix of delight and horrified. “Kylo Ren, stone cold bastard, has _actual real life feelings_ for a human woman.”

Ren rubs his temple. “Shut up.”

“No, no, I reserve the right to give you shit about this until the end of time. You know what this means, right?”

“Poe.”

“Means Finn and I are directly responsible for you turning into an emotionally competent adult man.”

“ _Poe_.”

“Leia is going to send me a fruit basket,” he says, rubbing his hands together.

“Poe I swear to fucking god-” he says, about ready to bang his own head against the wall. 

“Fine, fine,” Poe says, and Ren _hates_ the shit-eating grin on his face. “But you should know Rey’s going to eat you alive.”

And if _that_ doesn’t do things to his imagination. “Fine by me.”

“And Finn’s gonna be pissed,” Poe says. “But I’ll help you. It’ll take me some time to do recon. What do you need to know?”

Ren grins as their elevator reaches their floor. The doors open, and he says, “Everything.”

Xx

_Rey._

She’s working when she texts him next, and it’s the bustle of the crowd at the bar that gives her strength to finally reply.

 **_Rey:_ ** _Gambling is an unnecessary risk. And dinner is an overrated meal._

She watches the screen, holding her breath as she mindlessly fills pitcher after pitcher.

His reply comes a moment later, and her breath catches in her throat.  

 **_Ren_ ** _: Depends on the risk. And the dinner. Certain things are worth taking a shot on._

Then, a second text appears.

 **_Ren_ ** _: Also, I thought you weren’t talking to me again?_

 **_Rey_ ** _: Don’t be smug._

 **_Ren_ ** _: I’ll make a note of that suggestion. Side note, but Hux says that dossier you brought up to me that night in my room is missing. It was that night I was naked and you looked hot as hell, if that jogs your memory._

Someone calls Rey’s name, and she turns around to hand four beers to the people at the bar. They grin at her, drunk and happy and simple, and she smiles back. The minute they turn back to the bar, Rey ducks her head and shoots a quick reply. She doesn’t let herself think about what it means.

 ** _Rey_** : _Nope_.

She turns back to filling pitchers and pulls her phone back out again while she waits.

 ** _Ren:_** _You got any answers for me at all, Rey? Or am I going to have to find them myself?_

Rey scowls at her phone and shoves it in her pocket as she stops the flow of beer just before the pitcher overflows.

Xx

A few days later, Rey is once again staring at her cell phone on her bed. Finn’s voice is honey warm tones play from her voicemail.

“Hey, party at Ren’s next Friday. Want to come? Feels like years since I heard from you, and I miss you. Ren said to tell you he got supplies for Shirley temples, whatever the fuck that means. Anyway, shoot me a text. I can pick you up.”

Rey has listened to this message three times. Once when she first got it, and then twice again after Plutt left a different message for her and she had needed comforting.

Plutt’s voicemail had been simple and to the point. “Rey girl, you haven’t been by to see your old man in a week, and I’ve got a job for you. Tonight.  Don’t be late.”

But she _hadn’t_ gone. She’d missed the meeting entirely and so far nothing has happened, which is probably really bad, but she can’t bring herself to care. She’s cut herself off from her friends, so now all she has to do is work her shifts at the bar and keep herself alive for the next few days. And then the few days after that.

And after that, who knows? She could be in jail.

Realistically, she’s pretty sure Plutt doesn’t have the bandwidth or the resources to have her killed. Rey plays Finn’s voicemail again and stares at the map of America on her wall, reciting the order again. Las Vegas, Flagstaff, Maricopa….

And then, unfailingly, _what comes next_?

Instead of answering, Rey has been going to work, avoiding Phasma’s looks, and going home when her shift is up. She locks her door and stares at the map of the United States on the wall, wishing she had cable and debating switching apartments to someplace Plutt doesn’t know about.

She sleeps, and sometimes she texts Kylo Ren.

Tonight is one of those nights, thus the cell phone staring.  

 **_Rey_ ** _: Can you tell Finn I’m not coming to the party?_

 **_Ren_ ** _: No can do. You ever tried denying that kid something he has his heart set on?_

 **_Rey_ ** _: Puppy dog eyes work on a guy like you?_

 **_Ren_ ** _: Puppy dog eyes and garage kisses. Take your pick._

Rey groans. And then she hears the sound of a car door slamming outside her building. The walls are thin, and even though she’s on the second floor, Rey can hear most things that go on around her street. In the intervening silence, Rey forces herself to calm down.

Not everything is a threat. Not everyone is dangerous. It’s just a car door.

Kylo’s face flashes in her mind’s eye and she rolls over, burying her face into her bed. Why can’t she stop thinking about him? Her willpower is seriously shot, and her brain feels sloshy like the beer at the bottom of a keg.

Then she hers a rustling sound right below her apartment window and all self-indulgent daydreams vanish. Someone’s here for her, and she’s not ready. She’s not prepared. Why hadn’t she been practicing her self defense moves instead of texting some guy who could get her killed?

In the end, her hand reaches for her phone before her brain can stop her, and she dials his number without thinking.

X

_Ren._

He’s working at home when she finally _finally_ calls him. He’s had about four cups of coffee despite the fact that it’s past one a.m. as he processes the paperwork to wrap up last week’s messy-ass case, and he’s feeling more than a little manic. He wants a drink, but his mother’s voice won’t stop ringing in his head like a damn caffeine-induced auditory hallucination: _“Don’t self-medicate with alcohol. Ben. That’s what got grandpa in trouble.”_

And then as if on cue, he hears his dad telling stories about cops in his unit who drank their way out of their feelings and into nasty drug addictions that ruined their lives.

So instead, he self-medicates with a less destructive chemical: caffeine. And it’s working, mostly. His phone rings and he answers without thinking, expecting call from Hux or Poe or Finn on assignment.

But it’s her voice, slow and clear and hesitant.

“Kylo?”

He nearly drops his mug. “Rey?” he says.

“Yeah, uh, hey,” she says.

It’s around this time his brain resumes normal activity. “Shit, it’s good to hear your voice. How are you?”

“I’m okay,” she says, but there’s something off in her voice. Fear. It coats her words like melted sugar.

Knowing her as he does, he doesn’t let on that he’s picked up on it. _Be a friend_ , he tells himself. What does he say to Finn and Poe when they’re upset? He asks them about mundane shit until they feel comfortable telling him what’s on their mind.

“You working tonight?” he says, and it sounds stupid even to him.

“No, I’m just at home,” she says, and her voice is distant from the receiver.

Ren plugs in his phone to the cellular triangulator he’d “borrowed” from a badly locked FBI truck. He knows it’s fucked, but something about her tone of voice is telling him he needs to know where she’s calling from.  He loads the corresponding program on his computer as he listens to Rey make noncommittal noises on the line.

Poe is getting him a file on her in the next few days or so, so for now he’ll have to content himself with this method.

Ren’s distracted as he starts the program and the silences stretches for a minute until she says, “What are you doing tonight?”

That stops him. “I’m at home, working.”

Which is true.

“It’s a Saturday night,” she points out, her tone softening in a tease.

“Are you calling me a nerd?” he counters, watching the program boot up.

He hears the smile in her voice. “Takes one to know one.”

“You’re not a nerd,” he declares. The tracking program really works like on TV, the cellular data from his phone pinpointing her location at increasing levels of specificity, zooming in like he’s on CSI.

“I can be nerdy. I like geography,” she murmurs. Her voice is so soft.

“I remember,” he murmurs. The program targets her location within a few hundred feet and he sees the outline of an apartment building on the satellite scan. His inner professional cheers with triumph, and the part of him that is kind of obsessed with her growls with feral, possessive pleasure.

“I like geography, too,” he says, hoping the smirk doesn’t leak into his tone of voice.

“Yeah,” she says. He hears a muffled thump on Rey’s side of the line. It sounds like a door opening, or maybe something heavy being knocked over.

Rey’s sharp intake of breath prompts him to drop the act, because she’s clearly not going to volunteer the information and he’s sure as shit not about to sit here twiddling his thumbs.

He keeps his voice calm. “Tell me what’s going on.”

She laughs mirthlessly.

“I figured you weren’t fooled.”

“Rey,” he repeats, his voice hard. “What’s wrong?”

“I think there’s someone outside my apartment,” she breathes. It comes out almost as one word, like even saying it is painful. He sits up in his chair.

“What do you hear?”

There’s silence for a minute, and he imagines her straining to hear whatever it is. His heart is pounding in his chest like he can feel her fear.

“I keep hearing noises. I think… I guess just wanted to hear your voice for a second,” she murmurs. “I’m going to go check it out.”

Ren grips the side of his chair with so much force that he sees white lines etching into the leather. “No, absolutely not.”

“Chill out,” she says, with a ghost of that dry humor. “It’s okay.”

“I’m coming out there, just sit tight.”

“Don’t be ridiculous,” she says absently. He hears her turn the handle on a door and all at once he’s frozen to the spot, horrified that he’s going to hear her get shot or-

Rey’s voice is a choked little gasp, “Oh,” she says and he’s two seconds from jumping onto his bike and flying to her house, speeding laws and loose gravel be fucking damned, because if anything has happened to her, _anything,_ he will lose his fucking mind.

“Rey, what is it? Talk to me, babe,” he’s half shouting into the phone.

Then she’s laughing, hard and long. Half choking on her laughter, she says, “It’s a family of raccoons. They knocked over all my trash cans. They’re hissing right now at me like a bunch of furry little assholes.”

Ren leans back in his chair while the adrenaline, still flowing in his body, holds him tense. 

“Jesus, you scared the fuck out of me,” he says.

Rey’s still chuckling. “Well, that was it. No big deal.”

“That was insanely stupid,” he points out, his voice still harsh with leftover terror. “The fuck were you thinking, going out there? You could have been shot.”

“You know a lot about that, Kylo Ren?” she says. And her voice is light and airy, like any twenty something’s voice would be.

A thought occurs to him. “Why’d you call me, if you were already going to go out? You didn’t want my help.”

He knows he sounds peevish but he’s annoyed. It was a stupid thing to do and he can’t even tell her how stupid it was because he’s trying to be a _friend_. Which is idiotic to begin with, because he doesn’t want to be friends.

There’s a silence. He hears the door close again, thank fuck.

“It’s stupid,” she finally says.

In his imagination, she’s wearing an oversized t-shirt and knee high socks. It’s his t-shirt, he amends, and since he’s taking liberties, he decides that she’s not wearing a bra.

“It’s not stupid,” he says emphatically.

She sighs. “You make me feel kind of reckless sometimes. So I thought if I called you, I could get my nerve up. And also, if I was murdered by a family of raccoons, you would be the best bet to avenge me.”

“I’m pissed you used me as an excuse to make stupid decisions. Also, raccoons are kings of the night and I respect their hustle.”

He hears her muffled laugh. “You’re absurd.”

“You back in your apartment?” he says, though he’s sure she is.

“Yeah,” Rey murmurs.

“Lock your door,” he says.

“I did. I should go,” she says, but she doesn’t.

“Right, because we’re not talking to each other anymore.”

She doesn’t say anything for a minute and they just sit there in silence.

“Hey,” she murmurs, and her voice is soft. “I'm sorry. About running from the party. You were nice to me, and I just never know…what to do with nice.”

Ren spins his chair around to look into the desert. Thinking about that night and how angry he'd been, how fucking disappointed and confused. How he'd laid awake that night and fantasized about holding her.

“Don’t worry about it.”

More silence. “Kylo?” she says, and her voice is gentle. Nervous.

“Yeah?”

“You don’t hate me, do you?”

The small, fragile voice cuts right to his core, and he suddenly feels like a dick.  

“Of course not,” he murmurs.

“Okay,” she breathes. The relief in her voice kind of breaks his heart, because he realizes that she’d thought that was a possibility at all.

Finally, he sighs, “Next time don’t go out into the open if you think you’re being targeted. Just fucking call me.”

“But,” she murmurs. “I did.”

Then, just like that, she hangs up. The line goes dead and he just sits there, his head reeling.

He gets to his feet, walking over to the closet to pull on his boots and leather jacket. Then he grabs his keys and strides into his garage. At the end of a long dark highway, Rey Kenobi lives in a third-rate apartment within walking distance of the Scavenger Bar and Grill, and Kylo Ren decides that he’s officially giving up on staying away from her.

He gave her time to come to him first, and she did, so now it’s time to cut the shit. His helmet hides his smirk as he pulls onto the highway.

XX

 _Rey_.

Rey checks all her locks again, and finally decides that she’s done enough security for the night and that things are as safe as they’re gonna get. She double checks her drawer, sees all her important items are safely accounted for, and turns her gaze back to the map.

She rubs her eyes and sighs. She shouldn’t have called him, and yet it had felt right to do it, like flipping on a light in a dark room or taking a bite of food while it’s still hot. She had been afraid, and Kylo Ren had been the solution to that fear. She refuses to overthink it, because she was just using the melodic sound of his voice to give her courage to face her fears.

That’s all. And it had worked, hadn’t it? Rey kind of smiles to herself, because even though it hadn’t amounted to anything, Rey had been prepared to deal with it. And it had felt damn good to step boldly out with her knife in hand. She had been brave.

She’s debating a celebratory cup of tea when she hears the knock on her door.

Rey blinks, because raccoons can’t knock on doors. At least, not as far as she knows. No one up to any good knows where she lives, and it’s like two in the morning. She’s definitely had enough late night visitors for one day.  

Rey glances at her map one last time, and returns to her drawer for the second time today.

The drawer takes up one fifth of the kitchen in storage she has, but that’s fine with her since it’s the most important space in her whole house. It is home to her burner phones, her knives, and the series of fake IDs she’s stocked up from various jobs across the year. Everything in her drawer is essential, but none more so than the can of pepper spray she’s selected for this particular confrontation. Technically, it’s a risky choice for this sort of thing, since it’s easy for an assailant to get a hold of and use on her. It’s also damn easy to misuse. But it's fast, and she can use it from a distance.

The knock sounds again, and she grabs the pepper spray. The metal is cold and reassuring in her hands.

Then she hears the voice. _His_ voice.

“Rey, it’s me. Open up.”

Halfway to the door, Rey freezes. Fuck. She knows that voice. This might almost be worse, because if it was one of Plutt’s guys come to drag her back, she would at least know what to do. But Kylo Ren is a threat of an entirely different caliber.

“Rey, I ’m pretty sure you’re in there because this is the only apartment without an idiotic door mat. And I swear I’m not trying to be fucking weird,” he calls, “but I need to talk to you.”

Rey holds her breath. She should play dead. Or sneak out the back window, maybe. But she can’t really see him letting her get away. He’s maddeningly persistent, like a steam carving a mile wide canyon into solid rock. He will come back for her again and again, always giving her just enough space, always biding his time.

And if she’s honest, that’s the scariest thing about him.

She glances down at her t-shirt and leggings and frowns as he knocks again. She wishes for the green dress, for a pair of jeans, for a new fucking life, for his hands on her waist and his mouth on hers, and- _shit._

She’s going to have to open the door.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Is the POV hopping because our characters' lives are getting closer together, or is the author just too whimsical to make up her fucking mind? I'll never tell!  
>  **_Side note:_ ** I'm working on sort of a cross between Labyrinth, the Hades and Persephone Myth, and the Nutcracker ballet. So. Stay tuned for that, probably. Would love any input for scenes/tropes/stuff you've been wanting to see in a fic as I plot and start to write.  
>  Also, if you want to give me a Thanksgiving present, you can leave me a review.... (what's that you say? Thanksgiving presents aren't a thing and I'm being shameless? Sorry, can't hear you through my mashed potato coma!!!!!!!!!!!)  
> You can stop by [my Tumblr.](https://violetwilson.tumblr.com/) if you want to.


	7. Fever Dreams

**Chapter 7.**

**Fever dreams**

_Rey._

Ren’s voice through the door says, “It’s important.”

She pads to the door. “What is it?”

“Can’t tell you from out here. Let me in,” he says.

Rey sighs. “Why?”

“Just open the door, babe,” he barks. And it’s the second time he’s called her babe. And fuck, she _likes_ it.

“Fine, but don’t try anything,” she says. She pulls open the door and he’s standing there, his hair fucked up and his leather jacket coated in a light layer of gravel. She drinks him in as he stares at her, and she remembers again, too late, how tall and broad he is. How attractive.

She’d tried so hard not to contact him, but it all got fucked over by those damn raccoons. If she hadn’t thought it was someone coming to drag her off, she wouldn’t have called him. Or so she tells herself.

He’s leaning against her doorframe, towering over her with a smile on his aristocratic features.

“Hey.”

Somehow, the greeting feels like an understatement.

She glances down the hallway, which is empty. No apparent threat. And then, out of nowhere, she realizes her mistake.

“Wait, how do you know where I live?” she says, glaring up at him.

He grins, unapologetic. “You wanna tell me what you really do for a living?”

“I  work at the bar,” she says. Lying.

He shrugs. “Okay, then I got your address from Finn.”

“Finn doesn’t have my address,” Rey objects.

“And you only work at the bar,” Ren says, and he’s teasing her, the ass. “Let me in, Rey.”

“Fine,” she growls, irritated that he’d proved his point. “But don’t get comfortable.”

She stalks back into her apartment and Ren follows. She hears him lock the door behind him, and then he’s looking at her apartment in that assessing way of his.

“No danger of that,” he says, his brown eyes taking in the whole sum of her studio: her twin bed, her floor light, her kitchenette. It’s a pretty meager sight, but it’s functional. She thinks of Ren’s beautiful, architectural home and knows what this must look like to him.

Crossing her arms, she snaps, “It’s just a place. It doesn’t matter what it looks like.”

He takes his jacket off, which is not a good sign. He shakes his head and his dark hair, still mussed as all hell even as he runs his hands through it, falls across his temple.

“You’re right,” he says blandly. Then he walks right past her into the main living space, headed straight for the map. “What’s this?”

Rey yanks on the sleeve of his jacket, halting him in his prowl toward her life plan. “Nothing. What did you need to tell me?”

He turns to peer down at her, unapologetic. “Oh, nothing. I just wanted to see you.”

Rey lets her hand on his jacket fall down, startled almost out of her senses. Her immediate response is a heart-warming, all-encompassing thrill. _He wanted to see her._ He came all the way out here for her.  Aaaand then she’s annoyed, because he’d lied to her to get into her house. Not that she has any right to call him out for lying, but still. He’s not supposed to be here. She has rules, for crying out loud.

“It’s like, half an hour from the city,” she points out.

“Not such an issue if you’re not worried about cops,” he says, his voice steady and serious. “Also, I was very, very motivated.”

Then, in a turn she hadn’t expected, he takes a step toward her. And, sure, she’s glad he’s forgotten the map, but turning that passionate, focused energy on her wasn’t the plan either. When he reaches her, it is to shake his jacket loose and drape it across her shoulders with no ceremony or any particular gentleness. Then he turns away from her and walks into her kitchen directly to the thermostat.

“How’s it so fucking cold in your apartment?” he murmurs, and she watches with detached curiosity as he cranks up her heat. The heater does not work, but she’s not about to tell _him_ that, and she takes advantage of his turned back to smell the jacket. It has that same masculine smell she remembers from before. And then suddenly she’s thinking about that night again in the garage. His hands. His touch. She left him. Why would he come here?

“Why are you here?” she whispers to his back.  

His hands freeze on her thermostat and his shoulders hunch for a second. Then, his face carefully neutral, he turns.

“Just needed to check your place out. See that everything was okay.”

Rey gives him a weak grin. “I wasn’t lying. It really was just raccoons.”

“Don’t care. You scared the shit out of me. Needed to check it out,” he says, and then he’s walking to the front door again like he’s leaving. She’s filled with abrupt dismay, because after all that, he’s just _leaving_? Did he really just come out here to see she was okay?

No one is that selfless. She’s certainly not, and it occurs to her with sudden, awful clarity that this is what she’s asked from him. To care about her but not act on it, to want her but to always leave her alone. And the thought is bitter in her mouth. She doesn’t want him to go.

She wants to be where he is.

“Wait,” she blurts, unthinking and panicked. She reaches for him, and he does, turning around at her front door to look at her with his hand on the door. Then he smiles, and it’s gentle. Maybe he sees her panic or maybe he’s just nice underneath everything, but the expression is undeniably tender.

“I’ll come right back,” he murmurs. “Just going to check out the perimeter.”

Rey just kind of nods, suddenly choked up, wanting him to be telling the truth even though none of this makes sense. But she nods as he runs his hand across her cheek and walks out the door. She just stands there looking at her closed front door, waiting, hoping.

Part of her is sure that he’s just taken off into the night, because isn’t that what she would do? Isn’t it what she _did_ to him? Why would he come back here when he could be anywhere, with anyone he wanted?

But almost exactly three minutes later, the door to her apartment turns, and she’s standing in the same spot like she’s been planted there. He opens the door with his cheeks a little flushed from the desert cold and his hair mussed from the wind.

The relief she feels is insanity, but it floods her body like a drug. She takes a few quick steps and presses her body against his in a thoughtless, desperate hug. His arms wrap around her lower back and he presses a kiss into her hair, rough and clumsy as he grips her to him.

“Hi,” she says into his chest, refusing to look at him.

“Hey,” he breathes. “Told you I’d be right back.”

“Yeah,” she says, and her voice is thick, and she’s not going to cry. She’s not going to fucking cry on Kylo Ren, breaker of arms and hearts.

“Everything was fine,” he murmurs. “Though I’m having Poe swing by tomorrow to set up a few basic precautions. You need a new fucking lock, for starters. Your setup is abysmal.”

She just nods, not caring, not thinking about it.

“Okay.”

“You okay?” he says, concerned.

“I’m okay.”

“You lying to me?”

Rey swallows hard. And then she lies.

“No.”

There’s a beat of silence, and his arms tighten. She’s not sure if he believes her.

“Can I crash here tonight?” he murmurs.

“Yeah,” she says, even as she knows that this is a bad idea.

He makes a kind of grunt of satisfaction and, with no warning, takes her hand and walks them both over to her bed. He lands on his back tugs her down so she’s laying down on his chest, face down as his hand steadies her.

“Okay?” he says.

Still refusing to look at him, she says, “It’s okay.”

He tilts her chin up, and his serious, dark eyes meet hers. “I don’t have to be here. You want me to go?”

She tightens her grip on him. “Don’t make me ask.”

He lets her chin go, grunts once, and kind of nods. She presses her face back into his chest and just breathes in the smell of him. It should be awkward. There’s all these unknowns hanging between them, and they both know they’re keeping secrets from each other, but she feels safe with him. The feeling is intoxicating. It’s been a really long time since she hasn't felt hunted in her own life, but with him here it’s like she’s invincible. Nothing can touch her. So he holds her, and she lets him.

He doesn’t try anything, doesn’t even try and kiss her, just lets her lay on top of him as his hand rubs her back. Then he starts to talk to her.

He tells her about his motorcycles, and his deep voice rumbles through her chest as he traces lazy circles and describes different bike types. He teases her for how shitty she is at mixing drinks. He mentions his dad’s whiskey collection. He asks her questions about Phasma.  She asks him questions about Hux. They joke about setting them up, and then they both sober at the idea of that kind of unholy alliance.

Then he tells her about all the places he’s been to in his life, and he shifts her so she’s pressed up against him, side to side like they’re lovers, and she realizes they’re _spooning_.

He drove half an hour out here just to check on her, and something kind of comes over her. She cries a little, because, fuck, he’s so _nice._ Just so nice to her all the time. And then she feels stupid because this is horrible, she’s being horrible. She had been right to try and break it off, but she was wrong to have called him. It was just that she was scared and he makes her feel…not scared.

And it’s nice. It’s so nice to be held by someone who isn’t put off by her, who knows she doesn’t have a clean ledger and doesn’t care. And the safe feeling pushes out the other ones, and there is space in her chest that expands a little, like a lung does, and the space the safe makes gives the sadness room to be felt.

And Rey feels it. She feels sadness for a lot of things, not least of which is how this is the first time sad has ever felt more than just numbing or pointless or bleak. It’s the good kind of sad, not tied to any one thing, just a general kind of pain and longing.

And she cries, just a little and silently, but she can feel them.

Ren, safe and warm at her back, doesn’t say anything, though she knows he sees. All he does is reach over, one hand against her hip to steady her as he moves, to flick off her bedside lamp that is the room’s only light.

In the dark room, Rey cries a few more tears and rolls over to press the wetness into the fabric of his shirt. They’re face to face now, but she still doesn’t look at him as the cotton wicks the cold off her cheek. She breathes in the smell of him again, and his hand caresses her hip. They’re silent for a long time, until well after the sadness has burnt itself off and left something else behind. A feeling she can’t really name.  

She thinks he maybe kisses her forehead once, but they’re so close together it could have been an accident.

“Rey, I’m sorry,” he breathes.

She looks up at him, startled out of her reverie by his voice.

“You’ve got nothing to apologize for.”

“It’s preemptive. Pretty sure I’m about to piss you off,” he murmurs, stroking her cheek again the way he seems to like doing. “I have to tell you something.”

She stiffens. “What?”

“This… changes things for me,” he murmurs, and he sounds nervous in a way that she’s never heard. “I don’t want to pretend I don’t have…actual real-life feelings for you. I’m not going to. I like you. I gave you space, but you called me, and that means nobody hurts you again. Or I’m going to have a problem.”

“There’s nothing you could do to stop it,” she whispers. It’s the only part of his sentence she can answer without bursting into tears and just telling him the whole thing.  

Ren is suddenly on top of her, his body all angles and hard against hers as he flips her over onto her back. His body cages her against the mattress, but it isn’t frightening. No one has ever made trapping her feel good except him. She doubts anyone else could. He stares at her with those dark eyes lit up by the faint light of her window, and his hair falls around his face and he is _beautiful._

“You know what I am,” he says.

She does, and that’s sort of the kicker, isn’t it?  

“Ren, how many people?” she whispers, because she needs to know.

He frowns. “Don’t change the subject.”

“Consider it a condition of my answering,” she whispers.

His brow furrows and he lets out a sigh. She knows he understands the question in all its awful details. Then, slowly, he says, “Three.”

Rey blinks, because it’s not what she was expecting. Three. She exhales, because in a fucked up way it’s an intense relief. She couldn’t handle being with someone with clean hands. She’s done enough dirtying herself. And three is… a reasonable number. One above her count, which is comforting.

“Why?” Rey whispers.

His jaw works. “I got in with some bad kids in high school. My dad’s a cop, and it seemed like a good way to piss him off. Then I went professional, and it was easy to just take a job if I thought the guy deserved it. Net positive. But I don’t do that anymore.”

Rey’s breath hitches, because his story isn’t so different from hers. _Except it is,_ mutters a grouchy voice in her head.

“You don’t?”

He gives her that serious look. “I would make an exception.”

Rey swallows at the lethal intention in his voice.

“Does that scare you?” he murmurs.

Rey tilts her face up, running her fingers along his jaw, loving the way the breath hisses through his teeth at the contact. The power she has over him, this strong, lethal person, gives her a rush.

She thinks of the things that do scare her: fires and Unkar Plutt and the FBI. But...

“No,” she whispers.

And he kind of groans and half collapses on her body like someone’s cut his strings. “Thank fuck. I wasn’t sure how that was going to go.”

“About that,” Rey says. “Don’t read too far into it.”

Ren lifts himself up so he can peer into her eyes. “The sex or the talking?”

She smiles. “The talking.”

He doesn’t smile back.

“You want to know what I know about you, Rey?” he says.

And she _doesn’t_. She does not want to know how much she’s let slip.

“No. Just, don’t,” she blurts.

He gives her an even look. “It’s a lot. Enough to put together a story.”

Rey squeezes her eyes shut. “ _Please_ don’t.”

“I see you, Rey. And I like you, no matter what you’re running from.” She opens her eyes and he’s still just looking at her. “And if you want help, if you want it to end, I can facilitate that.”

He frowns, but then he nods, rolling off her and settling her body against his again like nothing has happened. His hand settles back on her hip, all strong and fucking gigantic, and she hears his breathing settle into an even rhythm, in and out against the skin of her neck.

Nothing terrible happens. She closes her eyes and inhales the smell of him. Rey presses her face into his arm under her head, and his arms tighten around her, drawing her against him. The muscles of his body are strong, and she splays her hand out over his upper arms, greedy to touch him, to be touched in return.

She doesn’t say anything for a long time, and he presses a kiss into her hair as his hand traces a soothing circle on her lower back.

With her eyes closed, Rey can imagine that she is any girl. That Ren is her boyfriend and that he loves her, and that they’re going to get brunch tomorrow and complain about their parents. She wants to believe it so bad that it feels like the want is just part of what everything feels like now, the way you take something for granted or get used to a scar.

Rey imagines it hard enough, lets that soothing dream wash over her as his hand slows down, and somewhere between the want turning into a dream and his hand drifting to stillness, Rey falls asleep.

And she’s okay. She’s honest-to-god okay.

x

When she wakes up, she has no idea what time it is. It’s still dark outside, and her blinds let in the limp moonlight outside. Rey is tangled in someone, his heavy arm pressing her against his chest so tight it feels like she can’t breathe.

No one should be here. No one has ever been in here. Then some dormant instinct kicks in, and Rey pushes at the body around hers, scrambling out of bed and falling on the floor. It’s panic. Just an instinct. She’s crawling on the floor, her head ringing and her breath coming out in little gasps as she scrambles away from the bed.

His voice is groggy, but he seems to understand what’s happening right away.

“Rey, baby, it’s me. It’s just me.”

She listens to the single syllable of her name from his mouth and remembers who he is. She’s safe. It’s Ren. Ren who never hurt her. The relief she feels could drown her, half dressed and hopped up on adrenaline and unresolved sexual tension as she is.  

“Rey, come back to bed,” he says, looking at her from her bed. In the dim light, his skin is pale and his eyes are inky black. She can’t move, she just stares at him as it kind of washes over her that he’s here. And she remembers again that he came back. That he said he would kill somebody for her.

_Actual, real-life feelings._ Christ, the whole thing is so unfair.

Then he reaches his arm out and grabs her by the foot, kind of pulling her back so that she squawks in protest as her ass drags against the carpet.

“You’re safe, come to bed,” he says, growly and low. Commanding. In charge.

“Ass,” she snaps, even as he pulls her all the way to the edge of the bed and tugs her back up onto the mattress. The strength of his body is kind of frightening, or at least it should be. But as he nestles her back into the cave of his body, Rey realizes that he has literally dragged her to bed and she is hopelessly turned on by it.

“Jesus do you ever stay put,” he mutters, “You’re like a goddamned raccoon.”

He puts his arm over her as she rests her head against his other arm, and they resume their spooning. His body is hot, and she lets the warmth seep through her. The panic recedes, replaced by that honey-warm wanting feeling she always has when it comes to him. Sweet and hot, it pools in her stomach. His body around hers is suddenly, almost painfully, real to her.

He’s right _there_.

She doesn’t recognize his erection at first, but as she shifts to try and shake off her crush, she feels the hardness digging into the small of her lower back and freezes.

He _wants_ her. He finds her attractive _._ His hand rests on her hip and she can feel the slightest pressure from his fingertips where they press into the soft skin there.

“I’ve wanted to get you into bed since the day we met. Didn’t picture it happening like this,” Ren murmurs, apparently unembarrassed by the hard on. They haven’t even _kissed._ How can anyone be so direct, so unapologetic and unashamed?

It makes her feel bold. _Just tell him the truth._  

“I’m getting out,” she declares. It feels right to tell him. Now all she has to do is tell Plutt.  

He grunts. “Like hell. It’s like three in the morning. You’re staying in bed with me.”

His voice is grouchy and unmovable, and some organ in her lower body turns to butter at the gentle, domestic bossiness of it.

And there’s satisfaction, too, because she told him the truth, god damn it. Even if he misunderstood it.

“Okay,” she whispers.

He kind of stills. “Okay?”

“Just… hold me. Like this.”

He knows what she means. He must know, because as he tightens his grip on her his hand dips lower and his thumbs runs over the sensitive skin of her abdomen. He moves his hand in a lazy arc across her body, grazing the underside of the swell of her breasts with the movement because his hands are so fucking big that he can run the length of her with just the slightest movement.

“Like this?” He says, and his thumb dips down half an inch. Just the idea of him touching her there makes her entire body clench, and he stops his movement for a tantalizing few seconds until she presses her ass into his dick to tell him in the only way she can that she doesn’t want him to stop.

It’s a language they both understand.

His fingers brush lower against the thin material of her t-shirt, and his other hand snakes under her body and out the other side so he is holding her with both hands, pressing flush with his hips.

“Rey, use your words,” he says, and his voice husky with sleep and want.

His hand brushes over the sensitive skin of her nipple and Rey arches against him, her body humming with this painful, desperate longing. It feels like her desire is a physical force that wants her to do things, say things. She could open her mouth and tell him the whole thing. The fire, the people who died, the drugs, all the bullshit. But what comes out instead is that she _wants_.

“Ren, I want-” she says, her teeth gritted tight against the hopeless falling feeling he has set off with just the lightest of touches. His thumb traces over the skin between her hips, so close, so _close._

Slowly, gently, he takes her breast in one hand and she feels his sharp exhale of breath on the exposed skin of her neck. He rubs his thumb across her nipple as his hand on her stomach opens and closes with maddening persistence, against the skin just above her sex.

It’s not the right spot, she can’t get enough friction, she wants-

“Words,” Ren whispers. “I need to hear you.”

“Ren, I-,” she says, and it’s kind of a keen and kind of a curse, and she clamps her teeth down on it. It cannot be this good. It cannot possibly be this good, and she’s bad, awful for feeling these things and he shouldn’t _want_ her the way she wants him.

And then he kisses her neck, and it is so different than anything else. It feels like he’s poured hot wax on her skin where his mouth meets her flesh, and it scorches through her. Shameless, desperate need floods her whole body like someone has opened that black box full of wanting him, and it all just comes out. She arches her back and grinds herself against him.

“Rey,” he grits out, his hand on her breast going hard, unyielding. “For the love of god.”

He kisses her neck again and Rey can no longer bear it. She pushes herself up so his thumb is right on her clit and he moans hot and filthy into her skin.

“Ren, please touch me,” she breathes. “I want you to, I want you to.”

He half rips up the hem of her shirt, exposing her underwear to the cool, dry air of her apartment. His thumb finds exactly the right spot on her clit, and he starts to rub slow circles as she twitches against him. The pressure sends skittering shoots of pleasure up her spine, and she curls her toes as he toys with her.

“What do you want?” he murmurs.

He is cruel. She had forgotten, but the naked pleasure, the _triumph_ in his voice reminds her.

“Don’t make me,” she says.

“I’m not going to,” he whispers, kissing her neck, taking his leisurely time with her. It’s not enough. It’s too slow, too sweet, she can’t handle it sweet.

“Faster,” she growls.

“Good girl,” he says, and she wants to hit him for how smug he sounds, how pleased he is to make her beg like this, arched against him and desperate. But then he speeds up and Rey forgets how to talk.

“Open for me,” Ren says in her ear, and she parts her legs as his hand sweeps lower.

But it’s not enough, it’s not close enough, and maybe he feels it too because he suddenly rolls her so she’s on top of him, her back pressed against his chest and his dick between her ass cheeks. A sense of hyper-vulnerability washes over her, and she’s about to tense up when slips his finger underneath the fabric of her underwear.

“Do you want me to stop?” he breathes, his thumb still doing that fast circle movement on her clit. The feeling of exposure turns white hot, like he has set flame to the fear and it is burning her from the inside out. Kylo Ren pays _attention_ to her body.

“Don’t stop,” she orders.

He hisses a breath and rubs his other hand over her sex, exploring her in the dark. It is so dirty, so tender, so intimate that Rey kind of forgets how to breathe. And maybe it’s the fear or the darkness or his cock pressing against her, but when he pushes a finger into her, Rey nearly comes just from that. It’s like her body is coiling tighter and tighter, crushing something inside her that was stealing the air, and it is _good._

“Fuck,” she whispers. “Kylo-”

The words stick in her throat, too close. She is so close. The wanting him is all she can feel. He groans like he can feel it in the heat of her and thrusts his finger in and out of her, kind of curling them as his thumb on her clit goes faster and faster.

Rey’s orgasm arrives the way day breaks past the edge of the earth. The sun ascends the horizon. She closes her eyes, and the dawn breaks apart around her.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Do you guys think they're ever going to do anything normally? I do not. The alternate title for this chapter is probably, "Are they ever going to kiss???" I was feeling like these two would probably not have a traditional approach to physical intimacy, and this just kind of...came out.
> 
> Also, thank you VERY much for 200 kudos! That is so exciting! It made me wrap this up in like three days, haha. 
> 
> Update on the new fic in the works; still staking requests, and I'm about 30k words into it at the moment. It's shaping up to be a lighthearted, tropey romp. Very different than this one! Has a strong Hades/Persephone vibe (because that's what this fandom needs- more HP fanfic). 
> 
> [PS. you can find me on Tumblr.](https://violetwilson.tumblr.com/)


	8. The Break

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> CW: verbal abuse. If you'd like to skip that section, check the end notes for a summary of what is said and what sentences introduce and close the section you may want to be aware of.

**Chapter 8.**

**The Break.**  

_Ren._

She falls asleep right there on top of him. It’s like the orgasm has just sapped all the energy out of her wiry body and it does not recover. She’s passed out right there.

Ren sits there for a minute, her still splayed out on top of him like a damn Christmas star, listening to the even sound of her breathing. For once in her life, Rey is as still as stone, perfectly at ease. There aren’t any secrets between them. She looks sweet when she sleeps, which isn’t an adjective he’d apply to conscious Rey.

An uncharitable part of him wonders if Rey just needed to get off this whole time, and that now they can waltz off into the sunset. She’ll wake up and tell him the whole truth, and he won’t have to investigate her history behind her back. But the tactician in him knows that’s optimistic at best. Still, he likes the idea of it, so he lets her sleep, adjusts her so that she slides gently off his chest and back into his arms.

It’s something like three am, which means that Hux and Finn are going to be in for a real treat tomorrow when she shows up for their weekly meeting. He makes a mental note to swing by a bakery and pick up some pastries to distract them from his shitty attitude. His thoughts wander. Rey laughing with powdered sugar on her nose. Rey on his desk wearing a black leather jacket and nothing else.  

He doesn’t notice when he falls asleep, but the wakeup is _distinct_.

Rey is shaking his shoulder and he sits bolt upright, jarred into wakefulness by an instinct born out of an attack that happened to him years ago. But he finds only Rey, slight in her t-shirt, staring at him with furrowed brows. She’s pulled her hair back into a ponytail. and she’s kneeling next to him, her knees on the floor and her hands gripping the side of the mattress. She has never looked more like a raccoon with her smudged mascara and wide eyes.

“Hey,” she murmurs.

Ren relaxes back onto the mattress, the fear leaving his body. Indulging himself, he rolls over and runs a hand across her cheek. “Hey.”

And like something out of a god damn movie, she closes her eyes and sighs. His dick is _very_ into this whole sweet morning Rey thing, standing to attention under her thin duvet.

“I’m sorry about last night,” Rey says, eyes still closed.

He blinks. Shit, what?

“Nope,” he says. “Don’t start this apologizing thing.”

“But I fell asleep before-” Rey says, and cuts off, squeezing her eyes tighter. “I know I have no right to ask, but can you please do me a favor?”

The words come out in a rush, and he wonders how long she’s sat across from him building up the courage to say this. It’s a lot to take in first thing in the morning. Her eyes open, nervous and defensive as they meet his.

“Rey, c’mon. Don’t apologize. That’s not how this works,” he murmurs. “You don’t owe me anything because I made you-”

“But it’s not, you know, even,” she stumbles. “I left you in a, uh, lurch.”

He laughs. “A lurch? Rey. Boner’s just a boner. Nothing to it. Relax. And anyway,” he says, sitting up and stretching the sleep out of his body from her shitty mattress, “Now we have something to look forward to for next time. Assuming you want to, that is.”

She lets out a stifled little squeak of surprise and looks up at him. He decides he’s not going to address this head on. “Breakfast,” he declares, swinging his legs around and setting them down with a thud on her floor.

“You’re joking,” she deadpans, still kneeling next to his legs, which is sending vivid images through his brain. Christ, couldn’t she have put on a damn sweater? Doesn’t she know how hot she looks right now?

No, he realizes. She has no fucking clue. And it’s a goddamned shame. She should know the effect she has on him, on everyone.

Ren gets to his feet, looking at Rey’s place in daylight. It doesn’t do it any favors, but he can see the edges of a personality creeping in. Stacks of paperbacks, bus stubs, a dried red flower leaking petals onto the laminate counters of her kitchenette. And on the wall, a map of the United States. The one she’d dragged him away from.

“I’m dead serious,” he says, stretching again and loving the way Rey’s eyes linger on his body. “I don’t fuck around about breakfast.”

Rey frowns. “I need to do something this morning.”

“Great. You can do it after we’ve eaten.”

“I can’t,” she says.

Ren glances at his watch, and nearly jumps out of his skin. “What the fuck can you possibly have to do at six am?”

That explains the exhaustion he’s feeling, then. All they’ve basically done is take a four-hour nap. Adjusting his mental prep for the day, he realizes he’s going to need to bring at least a dozen donuts to work if he wants his employees to tolerate him.  

Rey is standing when he turns around, rummaging in a narrow closet for something.

“I’m going to the DMV,” Rey says, flashing him a smile that has an edge to it. Nerves?

“The fuck?” he says.

Rey shrugs, yanking a sweater off a hanger and tugging it over her head. “I want to get my license,” she says through the fabric.

It makes as much sense as anything else lately. Hell, it’s probably a good thing for her to get it. She’s going to need her motorcycle license too, at this rate. He’s got a bike in mind for her, but she can ride one of his first. See if she likes it.

“Okay,” he says, his eyes tracing over the curve of her waist.

Emerging from the sweater, she gives him a watery smile. “Did you ride your bike here?”

“Yeah,” he says, grinning back. He gestures over his shoulder at the map on the wall behind him. “What’s with the map?’

Rey stills. “I told you. I like geography.”

He can sense there’s something else there, and he wonders what the little pins mean. Places she wants to go? Places she’s been? He’s got no fucking clue. Poe will tell him.

X

Rey feels good wrapped around him on the back of his bike. He knew she would.  He was right. Her fingers dig into the leather of his jacket and her helmeted head rests against his back, and even though a part of him wishes she was in a tank top and short shorts, he still thinks she’s cute as all hell in her gear.

He’d gotten her a set after that night in the garage, and they fit her like a glove. Especially the gloves.

The early morning sun is blinding as they race down the canyon path from Mountain Spring, skimming along ravines lined with crumbling ditches and gulches. Scrubby grassland rises up into little crags and foothills that tower above them, and the whole morning is done up in sepia colors against the painfully bright blue sky above. The winter cools the air to just shy of hot. Telephone poles whip past as the road flattens out, and he drives about ten miles slower than he wants to just to draw the moment out.

The morning is perfect, even if it’s fuck-all early in the morning and he still hasn’t eaten anything. He’s got his bike, his girl, his city. Nothing better. His dad had said something similar once. The thought is rattling, and he has a vague idea that he should call his old man.

He makes a curve and he hears Rey whoop with delight, her voice clear and loud in the bright air. The approach of the city stills her squirming, curious body, and their flying pace is reduced to stops and starts as they obey traffic lights. The scrubland gives way to strip malls full of cracked pavement and rows of tiny cinderblock houses with carports and barking dogs.

Las Vegas skews in two directions, ranging from the upscale suburban communities to the lower income residential areas populated by baby boomer era homes. Rey’s DMV is north of downtown, and it takes them a while to get there. Enough time for Ren to sort out a few things in his own mind.

He decides that he’s going to take Rey on a proper date. Maybe hiking, since she’s so wiry and agitated all the fucking time. She needs something she can _do._ Then after that, he’ll take her another date. And he will go slow, and he won’t do anything weird to scare her off. He’s going to give until she learns how to take, and then he will make sure that she takes and takes and _takes_.

He won’t call it dating, he won’t call it anything. He’ll just work his way into her life until she feels comfortable admitting to him what he’s already pretty sure of himself. She has actual real life feelings for him, too.  

When he finally pulls his bike into the parking lot of the DMV, he kills the engine and expects Rey to let go of him at the first possible moment. But she doesn’t. She must be hot as hell in her gear, but she just holds onto him.

He squeezes her hands where they’re clasped in front of him, and she tightens her grip just a little. Then she lets go, swinging her leg around and dismounting in one smooth, powerful movement. He tugs off his helmet and his jacket, and turns to take the jacket and helmet from her.

The look on her face stops him cold. She’s pale, nervous and jittery. It’s more than just tension from being back in the city. There is naked, undeniable fear on her face. A few weeks ago, he might not have recognized it. But the set of her jaw, the tension in her shoulders, the faint glassiness of her eyes speak to a tension that goes above and beyond the standard level of Rey agitation.

Two options present themselves. Either Rey is very nervous about her driver’s test, or, more likely, she’s not actually getting her license. Pity. He’s going to have to find out.

Ren sets the helmet on the back of his bike and reaches into the side bag. It’s a little sooner than he’d meant to give her this, but desperate times and all that shit.

“I got you this,” Ren says over his shoulder, withdrawing the thick metal switchblade and tossing it to her. Sheathed, obviously. When Rey catches it her eyes widen at the weight of it.

“You didn’t get that from me,” he deadpans.

She tests the weight of it in her hand, then flicks the catch to send the blade snapping out.

There’s a good reason switchblades are illegal, and Ren’s never really liked knives. High risk. High contact. He has a moment of apprehension that giving this to her was a bad idea. He could have got her a gun, but Rey doesn’t seem to like them, and a weapon you can use is infinitely more useful than one you’re scared of.

But she flicks it experimentally in front of her and gives him a serious, faintly amused look. “You know I don’t accept presents.”

He’s not going to hear it.

“So leave it in this parking lot. I’m not taking it back.”

Rey shifts her weight to one foot and bends the other. She looks speculative, like a scientist, as she closes the blade and taps the end secured knife onto her palm experimentally. It makes a heavy, satisfying noise.

“You trying to make me owe you?” she says, eyes narrowed.

He rolls his eyes. “Don’t start.”

She gives him a long look, and he can almost see something inside her settle down, grow serious. The fear is gone, thank fuck.

“Okay. I won’t.”

They stand like that, something hanging between them. “Thanks for the ride.”

“No problem.”

“You can go now,” she says, looking at her feet.

He nods, once. Then he pushes. “Pick you up in, what, an hour?”

Her head snaps up. “No. I’ve got a bus to catch and shit to do…”

“So, when can I see you again?”

Rey clears her throat and tugs her thumbs against the loops of her jeans like she wants to get out of them as much as he wants to get her out of them. Which is impossible.

“When do you want to?’

“When you’re done with this fucking DVM thing. But barring that, tomorrow night?” Ren says. “You’ve got my number. Call me.”

A trace of her impish grin flashes on her face. “Or what?”

She should know better than to tempt him.

He reaches out and captures her hand in his, tugging her a few steps forward until she’s pressed against him as he leans against his bike. She stands between his legs, eyes wide and her lips parted as she takes low, shallow breaths. Ren runs a hand along her neck and strokes the column of her throat. Then he catches her mouth in a kiss.

The kiss is electric, but slow. It means something, and the cold metal of the knife presses into his back as Rey’s hands twine around his neck. He wraps his free arm around the small of her back and draws her up and against him.

It’s not a decision as much as an inevitability. An answer. There is no world where he doesn’t see her again. There is no world where she slips through his fingers.

He pulls away first, not wanting to push it. Her eyes are glassy, and her voice is breathy.

“Yeah,” she breathes. “Got it.”

She gives him a small smile, rubbing her neck and shoving the knife into her front pocket. She’s so fucking cute, so lethal and weird, that leaving her feels like physical pain.

Then he shoves his helmet back on and kicks the engine to life, because, fuck, if she’s going to pretend she’s going to the DMV he can at least do her the courtesy of pretending he believes her. He gives her a final look as he peels out of the parking lot, and she’s just standing there watching him go.

Her expression makes something in him writhe with a pain he wasn’t expecting. He shouldn’t have left her. She shouldn’t have _asked_ him to leave. But then his light turns and he heads down the block to find a place to watch and wait.

If he was worried about pissing her off last night with the whole feelings thing, it’s nothing compared to how pissed off she’s going to be when she learns what he’s doing now.

But he can’t help that. She’s given him no quarter and she made it impossible for him to forget her. It’s a damning contradiction, and Kylo Ren doesn’t deal in impossibility. She’ll have to accept the consequences. It’s fucking obvious he’s prepared to.

X

She doesn’t go far, and from his view on the roof of the strip mall opposite the DMV, he watches her linger outside the door for a good five minutes, checking her watch. Ren shoots a quick note to Poe with the location as he waits for her to make her move. She’s waiting to be sure he’s actually left, he guesses. His clever, sneaky Rey.  

Finally, she takes a deep breath. His binoculars are good. Some of the best, actually, and he can see every shift of expression play across her face. It’s odd, he thinks, following someone he knows like this. He’s only ever found P.I. work like this comfortable when he has a head full of damning evidence about the guy.

With Rey, it’s different. He knows he shouldn’t be doing this, violating her trust. But the shit is going to hit the fan whether or not Rey tells him the truth herself, and he’ll be damned if she gets burned because he didn’t know something he could easily have found out. And he’s past caring about crossing lines on his moral compass.

And he’ll make exceptions for her. As many as she’ll let him.

In the end, she walks a few blocks north, and he tracks her with his sights on until she stops in front of possibly the seediest looking strip mall in the city. Rey hesitates for a moment, looking up at the sign on a high post in the parking lot, then walks determinedly into a storefront at the end. There’s no sign on the door, just a plain storefront.

Ren takes out his phone and dials the office.

“Poe, I got it. Meet me at the house in three hours.”

X

_Rey._

Rey looks up at the strip mall and grits her teeth, thinking of just how many times she’s stood in this exact spot feeling these exact feelings. Anger. Shame. Frustration. Fear. And every time, she’d gone back in, taken the next job, did what she had to.

It had always seemed like the fear was the one in the driver’s seat. She didn’t want to go to jail for burning down a building. She didn’t want to have something she did when she was sixteen hold her back for the rest of her life. But Plutt had always held the keys. It had felt inevitable to do what he said.

And now she’s here in broad daylight, staring up at the same shitty storefront in her same shitty shoes, and it feels like she’s looking at the same thing but standing in a different direction.

Rey takes a deep breath, thinking of Ren. She shoves him out of her brain, traps him that black box and shuts a mental door on the feeling. There will be time for analyzing last night’s… indiscretions later. After the work is done.

Rey jogs up to the front door, hearing the same cheery bell jangle. The carpet underfoot is brown from hundreds of drifters milling around over the years, and Rey passes the mostly empty room to the very back, where Plutt is sitting with his notepad. He looks up at her, the fluorescent light above his head flickering. His pen shakes in his hand, but his gaze is piercing and lucid.

She can do this. She can do this.

“Rey girl,” Plutt says, and his hands tremble even harder when he sets the notepad down. His fingers are blue. Oxy, Rey guesses. “Long time no see.”

His voice is low and dangerous, and Rey feels something deep inside her start to tremble with the bone deep fear. This particular fear is an old friend, one she’d set aside when she started playing along with Plutt instead of fighting. But it surges through her now, and suddenly she’s thirteen and hungry.

No way out but through.

Rey clears her throat. “I’m here to tell you that I'm out.”

Plutt doesn’t react. His breathing is shallow and labored, and he just stares at her with an almost bored look on his face.

The trickiest thing about Plutt is that she never knows what he’s going to do.

Sometimes, she catches him right at the high of a euphoria and he is amenable, affectionate, obliging. He wants to give her things, to make her love him. Other times, he is vicious and reactive. Mostly, he is negligent. But she likes it even less when she’s not sure how he’s going to react.

 _The devil you know_.

She says, “I'm not going to go to the cops or anything, but I'm out. I can't do this anymore." Her voice is shaking. There was so much more she wanted to say, but the words come out thick from the lump in her throat, and she can't seem to drag them past. 

Plutt starts to tap his fingers on his knee. His voice is sickly sweet. “Oh, Rey. I thought we were done with this shit."

Rey swallows. "I know, but this time I mean it."

"You mean it, do you?" Plutt says, eyes narrowing. He can smell her fear. "You're going to, what, go straight and narrow?"

The scorn in his voice makes her feel small. Stupid.

"I've been picking up more shifts at the bar, and I don't have time to-"

"That bar," Plutt says, raising his voice, "Is a cesspit I have been trying to save you from. You're wasted on those lowlifes. This is so typical of you. Running away the minute real opportunity is staring at you. I’ve been giving you the big jobs, you know why? Because I trust you. You’re good at this. You were born for it."

Rey looks at her feet as the torrent of his words runs past her. She bites her cheek, forcing herself not to say anything. It's pathetic, but not recanting her statements feels as close to standing up for herself as she can get.

Shoving her hands in her pockets, Rey's hand brushes the cool, heavy metal of the sheathed switchblade Ren had given her. It bumps against her hip bone, and the sensation centers her. She focuses on that instead of on Plutt, forces herself to describe it.

It’s heavy and high quality. Solid and strong. It could puncture aluminum, slash a tire, cut an artery. She can do this. She can _do_ this.

"I wish you the best," she mutters, turning around.

"You're not out until I say you're out," Plutt yells at her back.

Rey freezes, clenches her fist. She turns back around to look at him, the only guardian figure she has, and finds him nearly falling out of his chair with anger. He extends a milky white hand at her, his mouth hanging open.

The words come wet and rasping out of his blue lips.

"You're _nothing_. Nothing without this. You came from nowhere and that's where you'll end up. You have no education, no skills. You have nothing without me."

There's a bottle at her feet, and if she reached down and grabbed it, she could hurl it at his head before he could react. She could brain him with a glass bottle and walk the fuck away. It’s what he would do to her, if the roles were reversed.

Rey squeezes her eyes shut.

" _Nothing_ ," Plutt shouts. “I’ll only give you lowlife jobs from here on out. The worst jobs. And you’ll take them because you don’t know how to do anything else.”

Rey unclenches her hand and walks out.  _Out._

The bell on the door clatters behind her and Rey draws in a breath of heady oxygen.

She walks twenty, thirty, forty feet before she her heart stops roaring in her ears. She’s an entire block over and, suddenly exhausted, she closes her eyes and leans against the side of a pawn shop a block down the road from Plutt’s place. Her head rings. She comes to.

She didn’t know how she was going to feel after walking out, but she expected to feel different. She expected to feel like she’d made a major step in self-growth. But she doesn’t feel anything at all. Shouldn't she feel different? Or at least… something?

Rey looks up at the sun, tries to convince herself that that she’s out. She can have a normal life. She can do whatever she wants now. She should go somewhere. Do something.

She thought she would know what to do at this point, but there’s nothing in her mind. Rey closes her eyes, still standing in the parking lot, and waits for divine intervention or a miraculous idea or Plutt to come out and beat the shit out of her. He’s going to go to the cops. He’s going to press charges and then what? Should she skip town? The idea is abhorrent. She cannot, cannot go.

But nothing happens because nothing has changed. Who is she, anyway, besides a nobody?

“Rey,” says a calm voice.

Rey’s eyes fly open, tensing for a blow, but and he’s there, sitting on the motorcycle with his arms crossed, tall and improbable and so beautiful in the sunlight that it makes her heart ache. Her body remembers him, thrills at the sight even as her brain recognizes that wanting to have him is as impossible as trying to move a tectonic plate.

He’s not supposed to be here. He wasn’t supposed to see her like this. She was going to get free, be clean and good, and then he could see her. He’s a dangerous pipe dream, and he’s standing in front of her, his expression stony and serious. There isn’t a trace of his usual smirk or humor.

There isn’t a gap between the shock evaporating and the fury arriving, it’s just an all out 180 that sends her almost running forward, walking straight at him with a strength she didn’t think she was capable of. It just happens. She’s right in front of him, glaring at him, almost spitting with anger.

“You followed me?” She yells at him, jabbing her finger at his chest. “You said you would _go_. You lied to me.”

He leans down, grips her by the shoulders even as she bangs a hand against the iron cage of his chest.

“Yeah, I lied to you,” he says, his voice flinty and unyielding.

She squirms against his hold, trying to back up, to get away, but his hands on her body do not let up. She could stab him in the knee. She could dig her foot into the soft part of his heel. She could kick him in the balls. But she doesn’t. She can’t.

“What happened in there?” he says, his eyes flitting to the right her to Plutt’s corner of hell.  

Rey winces, realizing that this conversation really needs to happen somewhere else.  “Nothing, okay?” Rey growls, struggling in his grasp, feeling pathetic and sad all at once.

It all comes clearly now, seeing him. Nothing has changed. She tried to get out but she never can. Her voice is ragged, and she almost doesn’t notice the tears until they run down her cheek and onto her lips. “ _Nothing_ happened.”

She pushes against him and he releases her, his expression unchanged as she takes a few staggering steps back.

Rey turns around and looks back at the street, lined with a water shed that’s been dry for months now, and the architectural mesquite trees that twine in wrought iron spirals into the sky. But not far.

“It’s pointless, and I can’t explain it anyway.”

Behind her, his voice is iron. “Try me.”

“I don’t want to. And last night was a mistake,” she growls. _She lies_. She can’t look at him.

“Rey,” he says, and she can hear him as he prowls up behind her. Rey shuts her eyes but he doesn’t touch her.

“Just say it,” she snaps, though she has no idea what he’s about to say.

“Rey,” he says, his voice serious but not angry. “Do you want to get something to eat?”

His tone of voice is so mild, so _normal_ that it takes her a second to admit to herself that she hasn’t misheard him. She turns around just to confirm that it really was Kylo Ren who said it, not some stranger passing by and interrupting her fit of melodrama with an offer of breakfast.

But Ren’s just standing there, tall and unmovable in his leather jacket and his hair pushed back, looking at her like she hasn’t just tried to beat the shit out of him in a parking lot. Like she hasn’t just blown up in his face like an amusement park balloon.

“ _What_?” Rey says, brushing her hand against her eyes to wipe off the salt and sand.

“Do you want something to eat,” he says, slowly, not like she’s stupid but like she’s about to make an important decision and he wants her to be sure of the question first.

“That’s all you’re going to say?”

He shrugs and takes out a plastic wrapped beef jerky from his pocket. Not breaking eye contact, he tosses it to her and she catches it on impulse. Her stomach growls at the sight of it.

“I told you how I feel about breakfast,” he points out. Like it’s obvious.

“I don’t want this,” Rey says, holding it out for him.

He just looks at her blandly. “So keep it for later. I can make you something better at the house anyway.”

“Like what?” Rey says, feeling something dangerously close to humor creeping back into her heart.

He twists his mouth into a thoughtful scrunch. “French toast.”

Ah, _shit_. He doesn’t hate her. Even after this. Is this worse? She doesn’t know. Her stomach growls. Rey is thirteen and hungry. She could laugh at the shift in the mood, how he always manages to take what she’s feeling and let it morph into something else. Something better.

“You _suck,_ ” she points out, because he did lie to her, and she’s mad about it.

“Noted,” he says, unmoved. Not angry. “Can we please get something to fucking eat?”

Rey wants to object, to point something else out. The voice in her head reminds her that this is pointless and a lie, but she squeezes her eyes shut for a second and forces it to go away. _I know, I know,_ she thinks at it.

Opening her eyes, she squints against the sun. “Okay. Just give me a second.”  
He grins, a little of his swagger back in his expression. “Okay.”

Rey reaches into her back pocket and takes out her old switchblade, the cheap one that Putt had given her so long ago. It’s closed, as always, and she gives it a long look as she breathes deeply and forces herself to calm down. Then she crosses the parking lot and stands at the edge of the road that separates her from Plutt’s corrupt block. Focusing her hatred at the shitty strip mall that is the epicenter of her worst memories, Rey reaches her arm back and hurls the switchblade at the side of the store. It clears the narrow street and hits the brick side with a crash.

The cheap plastic casing makes a dry cracking noise on impact, and pieces of red plastic scatter on the ground. Rey hopes Plutt steps on the broken pieces. She turns back to Ren, who’s looking at her with a bemused smile on his face.

Rey takes a deep breath and walks back to his side, not quite feeling better, but not feeling quite as terrible, either. “Okay. Let’s get out of here.”

He drapes a hand over her shoulder. An uneasy part of her brain points out that he hasn’t asked her any questions about any of this. She hopes to god that it’s not because he already knows the whole thing.

_One thing at a time._

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> CW: Rey confronts Plutt to tell him that she's leaving the business. He uses a few tactics to try and get her to stay, praising her and then criticizing her. Rey walks out.  
> Skip from "No way out but through" to "The bell on the door clatters behind her and Rey draws in a breath of heady oxygen" if you don't want to read that! 
> 
> XX
> 
> Thannkkkksssss for reeeeading this chapppterrr!!! I'm excited to get the plot ramping up now that Rey's more or less out of her paralysis. Guess what's not going to be that easy, though? Hint: everything. 
> 
> If you leave me a review I will love you forever. 
> 
> You can stop by [my Tumblr.](https://violetwilson.tumblr.com/) if you want to.


	9. For the Record

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> This is my longest chapter I've ever posted! It's 6,600ish words! Just in time for my life to be thrown into complete chaos by the new Star Wars movie on Friday! 
> 
> W O W!!!

**Chapter 9.**

**For the Record.**

Rey is quiet when they pull into his driveway. He’s not ready to bring her back into the garage yet, so he just kills the engine right there. Rey dismounts easily and looks up at the house, and he wishes he could see her face through the gleaming mask of the helmet.

“It’s like sculpture,” she observes.

He smiles. “I think so too.”

She yanks her helmet off and tosses it to him, and her expression underneath the mask is wary. “Cool if I use your bathroom?”

“Wait,” he says, getting off his bike and stuffing the keys in his jacket pocket. “Finn and Poe are meeting me here in like half an hour.”

She blinks. “Oh. Okay.”

“Sorry, work thing,” he says, and it’s not a _lie._

She nods. “Yeah, it’s fine.”

But there’s something off in her expression. “You need a minute?”

It’s just a guess, but Rey’s a loner in a lot of ways, and though he doesn’t know exactly what happened to her today, he’s guessing it was searing. He likes to shower when he has a bad day at work.

“I’ve got a fucking amazing shower if you want to take one.”

She tugs at the sleeves of her jacket and gives him a dry smile. “You saying I’m dirty?”

Hell, Rey is really dirty, her face smudged from the ride and her hair a tangled mess on her head. But he’s sure as shit not about to admit that to her.

“No, I’m saying I have a fucking amazing shower,” he says, crossing his arms.

She nods. “Okay. Thanks.”

It feels right to take her hand in his as they walk across the concrete to his front door, and even though she looks up at him like he’s grown a second head, she doesn’t argue. The air in his house is blisteringly cold, and realizes that he’s left his AC on blast. She shivers as he shuts and locks the door behind them, and without looking, he points to the stairs.

“You remember where my room is.”

It isn’t a question, and he utterly fails at not to sounding smug as all shit.

Rey arches a brow. “Yeah.”

She disentangles her hand from his, and she’s halfway up the steps when she turns back to look at where he’s just standing, watching her like some kind of creep as her ass moves.

“I’m sorry,” she says, and her voice echoes around the high ceilinged foyer. “For being so much trouble.”

“What am I about to tell you, Rey?” he says tonelessly.

Rey looks at the ceiling, running a hand through her tangled hair. “Quit apologizing so much?”

He nods, and she rubs her arms. He doesn’t like how skinny she looks. How scared she seems of him, even now. He looks away before he can say something stupid. Or _do_ something stupid.

“Towels are in the cabinet next to the sink,” he mutters and walks out of the room.

Rey takes a long time in the shower.

Long enough that Finn and Poe arrive from the office for their meeting. They slouch their cheerful, tired way into the kitchen where he is grouchily organizing evidence photos on his laptop and trying not to think about how much room there is in his shower for two people. He yanks his thoughts out of the gutter in time to greet his friends as they arrange themselves in their customary places around the island.

Finn is wearing Poe’s jacket again, which is… something, for sure. Poe meets Ren’s questioning glance with a diffident shrug and sets his messenger bag on a barstool. Poe heads straight to the fridge for his usual drink.

Pointing up at the second floor, Poe says, “Who’s in your shower?”

Finn freezes in his rummage through the fridge and turns slowly to look at Ren, his expression startled.

Ren takes a sip of his Canada Dry.

“That would be Rey.”

There’s a beat of silence, then Finn blurts, “Wait, _what?”_

Poe is grinning. “You smug bastard.”

Ren refuses to acknowledge it and looks back at his laptop.

“Rey’s here?” Finn says, finally getting his drink and walking around to sit at the counter. Finn hands Poe his usual IPA and the two men just look at Ren like they’re about to have a friendly little chat. Which isn’t fucking happening. He’s trying damn hard not to think about Rey in the shower, but it’s nearly impossible.

She’s been in there for like 40 minutes at this point, probably all soapy and cute.

“How was the meeting with the client?” Ren says.

“No way, Heathcliff. Why is Rey here?” Finn says, slapping the countertop as if to get Ren’s attention.

“Ran into her on the Strip this morning. Total coincidence. But I gave her a ride and brought her back here. Thought you might like to see her.”

“Bull _shit,_ ” Finn says loudly. “How long’s this been going on, Kylo?”

Ren takes another drink. “Easy there, big deal. You wanna talk to me about secret romances? Because I have some questions I could ask you.”

Poe cuts in. “Speaking of questions, I couldn’t ask Mitaka any of mine, because he rescheduled our check in. Again.”

Ren wants to roll his eyes at the brute force subject change, but he knows Poe’s right. Business first.

Finn’s eyes narrow, glaring at Ren like it’s his fault somehow.

“Well, payment came through fine. No concerns there,” he says, tapping his laptop.

“It’s just… weird,” Poe says. “Why are they going dark on us?”

Finn shakes his head. “You saw the intel reports. It’s clearly a holding company of some kind. Offshore shit.”

“Swiss?” Ren guesses.

“Carribean,” Finn says, frowning. “Not ideal.”

“Think we’re taking dirty money?” Poe says.

“No such thing as clean money,” Ren sighs. “I’ll call the client. We still owe them the final report, but I’m not down to hand it over until I get a few points of clarification.”

Poe rolls his shoulders a little. “Not sure I want to break faith with these guys.”

“And we won’t. I need to have a little talk with Mitaka. Guy’s a squirmy bastard and might need a little reminder, that’s all.”

“You know what I was thinking about?” Finn doesn’t wait for an answer. “You guys ever heard of a Vader maneuver?”

Ren stares at Finn, because fucking obviously he hasn’t heard of a fucking Vader maneuver. That’s not even a fucking _word_.

Finn purses his lips. “It’s a mob thing. Two timing. You get in bed with one business, then hire a competitor to take the other one out.”

Poe frowns. “Why would anyone want to take down their own racket?”

“That’s the genius of it. Leaders of the smaller business take the fall for the crime, the bigger company looks good for reducing crime, and then they move in and take over the chain of command. Loose talent, supply lines, clients. Whole deal.”

“Why’s it called a Vader?”

“Named after the guy who did it first.”

“So you think we’re being played?” Ren says flatly.

Finn sighs. “I don't know. I’m just saying that if this shadow org is hiring us to look into a small time crime ring, I find it sort of bizarre. Petty 21 is small time, for organized shit. Would take two seconds for the FBI to get enough of a warrant to go in and gather paper records, but this company hires an independent firm with no jurisdiction to do it instead? They want evidence without a police trail. It’s suspicious.”

Poe’s eyes flash, and Ren knows Poe’s on board with the theory. Hell, he’s halfway convinced himself. Finn’s not an in-field guy. He does tech, he sees patterns, he looks for the right and wrong of a case. His job title might be doing the books, but Finn is unquestionably the heart of their operation, and his instincts are good.

Ren thinks about the abysmal lack of documentation, the established patterns and the poorly concealed hideout. He thinks about Mitaka and his last minute cancellations and generally spotty commitment to this project.

Then he thinks of Mitaka’s Armani suit jacket.

“Yeah,” Ren agrees.

Poe reaches for his beer. “This is too shady, even for us.”

“No,” Ren says, thinking of Rey and her hideout meeting today. “No, I want to sort this one out.”

Poe meets his eye, his gaze steady and undaunted. Finn doesn't miss the look that passes between them.

“Something I’m missing?” Finn says, reaching for his drink in a piss-poor imitation of nonchalance.

“Hey,” says a quiet voice from the doorway. Rey, in her clothes from earlier and her hair sopping wet around her shoulders, looks on with a serious expression on her face. Ren curses under his breath. How much of that had she fucking heard? How hadn’t he noticed the water had cut off?

Finn is on his feet at once, crossing the room to pull Rey into an enormous hug. The tension in the room breaks as Rey laughs as Finn twirls her in a circle, saying, “Where the hell have you been, peanut?”

“Sorry, sorry,” Rey says, her voice muffled against his shoulder.

Ren meets Poe’s eye across the counter and the other man taps his coat pocket significantly. Ren nods, turning to the speakers in his kitchen and plugging in his phone to hide his frown. They need a little background music to cut the tension. And some food.

“I’m making French toast,” Ren declares, scanning through his music.

Behind him, Finn says, “Play something the _whole_ class can all enjoy.”

“You’ll listen to prog rock, and you’ll like it,” Ren calls over his shoulder. “Poe, get the ingredients.”

Poe mutters something that sounds distinctly like “bitch” under his breath, but Ren hears the fridge open anyway. This is how it always goes when they have French toast. Granted, it’s usually it’s 2 am on a Friday night. But still. Poe’s always on prep.

“Can’t we just listen to _nice_ music,” Finn groans, and Ren glares over his shoulder at him. Finn has his arm over Rey’s shoulder and she’s speaking quietly to him, grinning and wet and beautiful.

Pissed off for reasons he knows are uncharitable and stupid, Ren turns back to queuing music as Poe sets out the ingredients. They don’t even need a recipe at this point.

“Go sit in the living room if you’ve got a problem,” Ren says to Finn. He turns back to look at Rey, and her eyes are wide when they finally meet his. He says, “You want something to drink, babe?”

Her lips part for a second on a little inhale he can almost hear. Finn looks like he’s eaten something sour. Ren tries not to laugh.

He adds, “I have ginger ale, juice, whatever the fuck.”

Rey smiles, low and slow, and he grins back, because he already knows. He walks to the fridge and tosses her a ginger ale. She catches it, her smile wide.

Finn rolls his eyes and leads Rey by the hand to his living room sofa, which glows like a full moon in the bright morning light. The strident strains of John Paul Jones fills the kitchen, and Ren just barely makes out the sound of the carbonated hiss of a pop can opening from the living room.

Poe stands next to him as they assemble the French toast, and Ren waits for Dameron to finish the report he’d only half delivered in front of Finn.

But Poe takes his time, dipping bread in egg batter with the practiced hands of a natural chef. Fucking Dameron. Just _good_ at shit. It’s so irritating he almost doesn't notice that it takes Poe a few minutes to sort his shit out and start talking.

He says, “Sort version is that Rey’s probably in with petty 21.”

“Ah, shit,” Ren mutters, glancing over at where Finn and Rey are laughing on the couch. “Does Finn know about this?”

Poe gives him a withering look. “No.”

Ren hates this part. “Don’t tell him. He’s too close.”

“And you’re not?” Poe says, taking a long drag on his beer as he waits for the bread to absorb the mixture. It’s amazing how much sarcasm the guy can put into so few syllables.

Ren takes the first of the prepped pieces and sets them on the hot pan. Ren’s mother liked to cook when she was stressed out, and the smell of sizzling pan-fried meals always makes him think of her.

He grunts, trying to get the sentiment right. “I’m a professional. So is Rey. So are you. Finn is…”

Poe’s eyes linger on the younger man, and they both just watch Rey and Finn being fuck-all cute. Friends.

“Yeah,” Poe concedes, his gaze softening. “Alright. But I’m going on record that I don’t like this.”

“Noted,” Ren sighs, feeling suddenly old. He flips the French toast over, and it’s perfectly golden brown on the cooked side, as per fucking usual. “What else do you have?”

“Location you sent me this morning was the link. Matches up with a few known drop sites, so it’s reasonably safe to say that’s probably our guy’s hideout. Deed is registered to a dead guy. Fake social and everything. So, still no owner’s name, but we’re talking at least identity theft here. Client could nail him on that alone, assuming that’s why they want this information.”

Ren nods, because he wasn’t expecting anything else.

“What are we waiting on for the deliverable?”

Ren keeps his pose deliberately casual. Rey’s attentive to body language.

Poe matches him, leaning against the counter and shrugging fluidly, his hand holding the ghost of a cigarette at his hip.

He says, “Client’s hungry for whatever we can give him. We could deliver tonight if we wanted.”

Ren lifts the cooked French toast out onto a waiting plate and covers it with a ceramic lid to keep the heat in. He tosses a few more raw pieces onto the griddle, because Finn eats like a half starved cat. Ren thinks suddenly of BB-8 and smiles. Then he looks a Poe’s expectant expression and the warm feeling dies.

“Rey would be implicated,” Ren says flatly.

Poe grunts. “She was a minor for a lot of the stuff we have on the leader. Her records are still in CPS, so there’s no issue there. But I can’t find any dirt on her specifically. A few minor run ins with the law, trespassing, that kind of thing. They could get her on known association, but I’m not sure they’d want to.”

But Poe’s tone is not encouraging, because they both know that Rey’s tied to the core issue somehow. Ren chews the inside of his cheek, every molecule in his body trained on the girl in the living room.

“Did you find anything about a fire?” Ren murmurs.

Poe frowns. “Nothing I found. Search could have missed it. The leader has about a thousand aliases. Initial research didn’t pull anything conclusive, and he’s old enough a lot of them are offline. Paper copies. Bitch to get through the courthouse.”

“There’s something about this that still doesn’t add up,” Ren mutters, flipping the second batch of French toast over. He remembers the cinnamon at the last minute and adds some to the second batch. Christ, does she have allergies? He should have asked.

“Rey,” he calls over his shoulder, “You got allergies?”

“Amoxicillin,” Rey calls back, and he wonders if it’s the first personal detail he’s gotten from her directly without a fight.

“I’ll leave that out then,” Ren barks back, and she laughs. Really laughs.

In an undertone, Poe says, “This client’s been asking some really pointed questions. Known associates type of shit. Not interested enough in the prosecution aspect. Why aren’t they pressing for evidence? Why all these reports?”

Ren scoops the second batch and covers it, wiping his hands on a towel.

Poe’s voice rises a fraction. “And for that matter, why aren’t there any records? Where are they keeping this stuff?”

Ren grabs the butter, cuts off an enormous slab, and runs it luxuriously across the top.

“Get the juice,” he barks, irritable again.

Poe hands it to him and takes four cups from the cabinet. They arrange them on the island like it’s Easter or something.

“It’s personal,” Ren mutters. “It’s gotta be personal.”

“We don’t take personal cases anymore,” Poe points out. And he’s right. Tempers run too hot, shit gets too weird. But this client hadn’t seemed personal. Just a deal gone wrong, Ren had figured. Revenge type of thing. But the more they learn about the organization who hired them, the murkier it gets.

To say nothing of Rey.

Ren opens his silverware drawer with more force than necessary, sending the cutlery ringing against each other.

“I’m getting Rey out first. Then we can deliver.”

“So we’re, what, stalling now?”

Ren looks up at Rey, who seems to have forgotten them entirely. The Rey he first met would have had her eyes on them the whole time, her guard up and her ears alert for any intrigue or trouble. But she’s just chatting with her friend, waiting for breakfast, trusting that she’s safe.

He ignores Poe and sets the forks and knives on the stone counter.

“Hey, come eat before it gets cold,” he calls to Rey and Finn. Poe gives him a weary look.

Finn jumps to his feet, grinning. “Rey and I have reached a decision,” he says, drawing out a barstool at the counter. Rey is hot on his heels, a shy little smile on her face as Poe serves everyone juice.

“We’re going out,” Finn declares, apparently irked no one has asked him.

It takes Poe two heartbeats to respond.

“Seriously? We haven’t been dancing, in, what, a year and a half?” The question is straight to Finn.

“Not true. We danced at-” Finn says, then cuts off, looking at his food. “Ah, I forget. But we’re overdue.”

“And I’ve never actually been to one of those clubs,” Rey interjects. “I used to love dancing.”

Ren glowers at Finn. They’re going dancing, now? Ren sort of feels like throwing Finn through the window, but he stares at Rey instead until she looks up at him, a little sheepish.

“This a good idea?” Ren says, taking a piece of French toast and forcing himself not to bite into it like a wild animal.

Finn, grinning in spite of his shitty reaction, says, “Don’t worry, you’re not invited. You’ve been hogging her. We need some friend time.”

“I’d like it noted that this is a terrible idea,” Ren points out, irritated in spite of his undeniably fantastic French toast.

“Noted,” Finn and Poe say together. The grin they give each other is so sweet it makes his teeth ache. He glances at Rey, who’s looking at her two friends with a fond expression on her face. Then she looks at him, and she smiles. There’s an edge to it, like there is to almost everything that touches her, but there’s a little hope there too.

“Have fun,” he says, trying to convince himself he means it.

“I’ll get out of your hair,” Rey murmurs. “So you can work.”

“Like hell,” Ren says smoothly, and her eyes snap to his face. He’s thrilled at the surprise there, because it means she’d been expecting him to say yes. She’d been prepared to take. “You’re going to the office with Finn today.”

Finn, a bite of breakfast still halfway to his mouth, says, “Sorry?”

Ren grabs the juice and pours her a glass. “Show Rey your setup. I think she’d like it.”

Poe gives him a smug look.

Finn frowns thoughtfully, nodding like a sage. “Sounds good to me.”

Rey’s eyes linger on his face in a _what the fuck_ kind of way. He almost throws a second piece of French toast on her plate.

“Not like you need my help,” she hedges.

So Ren hands her the juice. “You don’t know that.”

“What about like, security clearance?” Rey tries.

Ren takes a long drag of his juice, letting the sweet tartness taste flood his mouth.

“You’re an exception to the rules, Rey.”

X

They leave for the day, Poe to go on assignment and Finn and Rey to the office. They’ll meet each other that night for dinner, followed by Finn’s insistence they do “some fun shit” after that. Ren tries very hard not to imagine what they’re going to do, reminding himself that he can’t be with her every minute of every day. That she has friends. That Poe and Finn are the only two people he’d really trust to look after her in a city where looming crime groups threaten their tenuous existence.

Across the desk, Hux glares at Ren over his coffee cup. His dark sunglasses shield his eyes from the harsh glare streaming through his home office’s window, but they don’t speak to each other. They never do when they work. But Hux keeps looking at him, his mouth pressed firmly together over the top of his laptop.

Ren abandons his report and glares at his colleague. “Need something?”

Hux frowns, which doesn’t mean anything since Hux always frowns.

“Just thinking,” he says in his clipped voice. Smug.

Ren makes a show of looking back at his computer again. “Can you think a little quieter?”

“You and Rey, huh?” Hux says, out of fucking nowhere. His grin is tight and pleased.

Ren looks sharply at him. “Fuck _off_.”

Hux smirks. “She left her jacket on the bannister.”

Ren ignores him. “She’s Finn’s friend. That’s all.”

“We don’t have friends,” Hux says, stretching.

Ren stands up so sharply that his office chair almost tips over. Hux’s eyes widen as Ren reaches for his suit jacket.

“I’m going.”

Ren is halfway to the door before Hux manages to object. A new record.

“Where are you going? We’ve got to finalize this report, and if you leave me to do all the authentication-”

“I’m not going out tonight. I’ll get it done. Go home, Hux,” Ren says.

“What the hell are you doing?” Hux protests, his voice rising slightly in pitch.

“Following my own advice,” Ren mutters, feeling for his keys in his pocket.

X

His parents’ house is a low to the ground concrete affair with, of all things, an enormous wood burning fireplace in the center of it. Chewie barks his head off when Ren pulls his bike up to the carport, and Ren drops down to a crouch in the front yard to pet the enormous dog. So little has changed in this place, and when the door opens and his dad leans against the frame with the exact same enameled coffee mug in his hand, Ren has a weird sense of vertigo.

He’s ten, still called by his actual name, not the professional one he adopted to protect his. He can never use Ben anymore or risk exposing his law enforcement parents, and he forgets about it sometimes. But it’s always here, in this house, with this man,

Chewbacca rolls in the dirt, only stopping his exuberant display when he hears Han’s voice and perks up.

“Hey kid,” his father says. It’s like no time has passed at all.

“Hey, dad.”

“I’ve got twenty minutes before I need to make it to precinct. Let’s get into it.”

X

Han pours him a truly awful cup of Folgers and sits down across from him at the hand carved wood table his mother made. The whole house is a mixture of low ceilings, mid century design, and Vegas kitsch. He’s never understood his parents and their unconventional marriage, and he still doesn’t. But they tolerate his career decisions despite it taking him in a direction antithetical to theirs, and he should be grateful.

Han, looking old and wiry in his flannel and oil-stained khakis, grins at Ren like he knows something. The look never failed to piss him off as a teenager, but now that he’s no longer living at home.

“Right,” he says gruffly, “Who’s the girl?”

Ren blinks. “Sorry?”

Han rolls his eyes. “There’s only one reason your wayward asshole of a son comes over out of the blue. A girl.”

Ren wavers. He wants to be offended. He wants to tell his dad to go to hell, that he wouldn’t have any of these fucking attachment issues if he’d just been around when he was a kid. But he hears his damn therapist in his head saying something about knee jerk reactions, about the difference between anger and sadness.

So he gives into his second impulse, which is to roll his shoulders back in relief at the thought of finally telling _someone_ about all this.

“Yeah,” he admits. “There’s a girl.”

Han spreads his hands in an _I’m waiting_ gesture, and Ren tries to explain it.

It doesn’t come out right, and he can’t tell his dad the bulk of the criminal details, but with many stops, starts, and _fuck, I don’t know, it’s just_ s, he gets the gist of the issue out. He tries to describe her, the way she looks, the way she skirts on the edges and doesn’t trust anyone. The way he fell hard for her. Han nods and grunts in questioning or understanding ways that keep Ren talking. Finally, he leans back in his chair and sighs, the whole thing told.

Han taps his fist against his chin in a reflective way and finally says, “You’re fucked.”

Ren shakes his head. “I know.”

“You want to protect her,” he confirms, and Ren nods. Han adds, “Because you like her.” Ren nods again. Han presses, “How long’ve you known her?”

“Few months.”

“Huh,” Han grunts. “Long enough.”

“For what?”

Han looks at him appraisingly. “You know, when I met your mom I thought she was the most stuck up person I’d ever met. Trouble from top to toe. Hated me on sight.”

Ren nods, because he already knew his mother was too good for his father. It doesn’t really need to be said. Han leans forward on the table and points at his son, almost accusingly, and says, “I loved her from day one.”

Ren frowns. “Don’t be dramatic.”

Han, hands up in a _who, me?_ kind of way, raises his eyebrows. “Hey, don’t look at me like that. You’re my kid. You’re like me. Like it or not.”

“Not,” Ren says acidly.

Han gets to his feet. “Take my hint or don’t, but you need to sit down and ask yourself what you’re trying to get out of this. Because you’re putting it all on her and her issues, and that’s not reasonable. You’ve got something on the line.”

“The hell does that mean?”

“It means come home, Ben,” Han says, pausing at the door with his hand on his police jacket. “Come to dinner. Your mother misses you. And I’m getting pretty good at smoking pork out back.”

Ren blinks. “Dinner?”

“Yeah. Tuesday. Five PM.”

Ren glances through his mental calendar, decides he doesn’t care if he has anything that day either way, and says, “Fuck you. I’ll be there.”

Heading out the door to his cruiser, Han calls, “And you might as well bring the damn girl.”

X

It’s after five when he gets home from his dad’s, and there’s no sign of Rey, Finn, Poe, or Hux. He stands in his living room, looking at the green khaki jacket she has indeed left draped over the back of his couch. He’s thinking about his dad, about Rey, and about his life.

He takes out his phone and pulls up Rey’s number. He shouldn’t call her. He’s giving her space to process. He hits dial anyway, because fuck that. He wants to hear her voice.

She sends him to voicemail, and he debates leaving her a grouchy voicemail but decides he’s already injured his pride enough today. But then a text pops up.

**_Rey:_ ** _Hey, can’t talk. What’s up?’_

It’s so jarringly normal that he takes a moment to adjust to the shock of it. Such a normal, reasonable response. He’d been expecting her to stonewall him, but she’d followed up. He’d fed her breakfast with their friends and now they’re coordinating schedules.

What’s next? Arranging brunch dates for all their friends and picking out flatware at Crate and Barrel? He snorts a laugh, trying to imagine Rey doing something like that. Then he stops laughing as he finds himself liking the idea of buying silverware and towels with her a _lot_.

But it’s not like this is a strictly normal situation. He’s paranoid that she’s going to get offed by a criminal group he doesn’t understand while lying to her about how much he knows. Meanwhile, she’s lying to him about her entire history.

And he’s staring at his living room and missing her in it.

Rolling his eyes, his fingers fly across the screen of his battered cell phone.

**_Ren_ ** _: Just checking in. You good?_

He refuses to stare at his phone until she replies. He absolutely refuses, and walks into the kitchen to make some pasta, because he’s hungry as shit. The water’s boiling and the tomato sauce is simmering by the time she texts him back.

**_Rey_ ** _: I’m good. We’re getting dinner and going to a club tonight, I think._

Ren sets the box of noodles in his hand down with a groan.

**_Ren_** _: Is that a good idea?_ He types, hoping it comes across as a real question and not the “Rey what the actual fuck are you thinking” that it is.

She sends him an emoji of a barking dog followed immediately by “ _this is you right now.”_

He wants to be chill about this, but a large, large part of him hates the idea of her running around Vegas after such a searing day. Shouldn’t she be in bed at home with him? It’s all wrong. Why can’t they ever do one thing in the right fucking order?

He dials Poe’s number, and Poe answers with gratifying speed.

“What’s up, boss?” Poe says easily.

“You’re going to be very, very careful tonight,” Ren says, with no preamble, because really, fuck Poe and his god damn confidence that everything will work out.

He hears Poe rumble a laugh, but Poe’s not stupid enough to actually mock him when he’s in this mood.

“Okay. Of course.”

“I’m not fucking around,” Ren snarls. “She’s not just anyone.”

“I know,” Poe says, a little less humorous now.

He hears Rey laughing at something in the background of the phone call. Ren has a bad fucking feeling about this. He doesn’t even know what happened this morning. She could have been something intensely rash. Pissed off someone. He’d been planning to keep her someplace safe, then to talk to her about it. Get the full story and then maybe fuck her in his shower. This whole gallivanting around the city while he worked on his daddy issues thing _wasn’t_ the plan.

Ren runs his thumb across the holster of his gun at his hip, letting the uneasy feeling wash over him while Poe waits patiently on the line for Ren to come up with something to say.

“She doesn’t drink much,” Ren finally says.

Poe snorts. “Well, tonight she does. Finn’s been buying her mixed drinks.”

“Christ,” Ren growls. “You’re both terrible.”

“Lighten up. She needs a night out,” Poe says breezily.

“I’ve just got a bad feeling about it.”

“Noted,” Poe says, unaffected.

“Just look after them, Dameron,” Ren sighs. “Her and Finn. And don’t tell her I called you.”

Poe’s says, “Got it.

Ren hangs up, cursing fluently as the water in the pot boils over.

* * *

_Rey._

Rey loves dancing. It’s late at night and Rey _loves_ dancing. Rey loves dancing and she’s going to dance forever. The DJ is playing some crazy dance tune and there are lights and she thinks she might be downtown? They dance and Finn and Poe keep all the weirdos off her, and she is happy. No one can bring a gun into a nightclub. Not with metal detectors. Not with bouncers.

They dance until Finn takes her hand and leads them all to a little table at the edge of the dance floor, and there are people and lights and a high ceiling that is not on fire, except it is illuminated with colored lights that look like sunshine or grade school classroom carpet.

She’s not _that_ drunk, but the music and the company, and the lights, and her silky dress again. It’s good.

It’s so good. She used to dance all the time. She used to drink all the time, too, and this exact scenario was probably why she more or less quit. But it had felt good and important to toast to telling Plutt to go the fuck to hell two hours ago, even though that’s not what she _said_ she was toasting to. She hadn’t said anything.

She’d repeated “hell yeah” when Poe had said it, because it felt good to do.

And that’s what she’s about, tonight.

She’s going to feel good. That’s what Ren said. That’s what he promised her he would make her feel. She thinks about Plutt and his sour breath and thinks that he can go the fuck to _hell._

Just to be sure, she leans across the table to tell Poe, “He can go the fuck to hell.”

Poe puts both hands on her shoulders and kisses her on both cheeks. “So true.”

She laughs because Poe doesn’t even know who she’s talking about, he’s just on her side. Finn sidles up with a water for her and she downs the whole thing in like, two sips. New record, for sure.

Finn cheers as the song switches to a new song, something slower. It sounds sad. Suddenly, like magic, Rey is sad, too. Music is dumb. Drinking is dumb.

She pushes through the crowd, and maybe Finn calls her name or maybe not, she’s not sure, but suddenly she’s on a different platform, higher up. Near the door, maybe? Her phone has service. There was only one person she was ever going to call, all things considered.

He picks up on the first ring as Rey sits down at the edge of the room, her back pressed against the cool concrete wall as bodies walk past her, a thousand feet tall in heels and dress shoes.

“Rey,” he says when he answers, his deep voice all sexy. It drags down her ears. It sticks to her brain.

“Listen,” she says, trying to keep her voice clear. She’s being so clear, she’s sure of it. No one has ever sounded less drunk. “I’m just sitting down over here, and I wanted to call you just to catch up. Like how people do. And I am a normal person.”

He’s silent for a second. “Where are you?”

“Just, like, on the ground,” she says. Crystal clear. Perfect. “What are you up to?”

“Have you been drinking?” he says in that honey voice. Graham cracker voice. Ah fuck, he’s onto her.

“That’s always a question,” she says. “I'm not going to lie to you.”

“That’s great, sweetness,” he says. She can hear voices in the background. Music or people or a movie.

“Are you with another girl?” Rey blurts.

Ren makes a weird noise. “Sorry?”

“I didn’t let you kiss me before. I wanted to. To let you. I don’t want you to date someone else,” she says. _Genius_ strategy: disarm him with the truth. Maybe he’ll think she’s lying. She’s always lying.

“Rey, where are you?” he murmurs, and she imagines his hands, rough and grabbing, on the fabric of her dress. Her breath hitches. Across the room, couples dance together and figures flit in and out and around them, moving with purpose. With intention.

“I’m in Floor Town, USA. I’m the mayor. Where are you? Are you with another girl?”

She is fucking direct. She is a champion of directness. She is fearless and she is not scared that Kylo Ren might love someone else and not her.

Ren makes a noise. He’s always making noises _._

“I’m home. Got back from my parents’ place,” he says, and she can hear his amusement. Which is good.

He’s funny, so she laughs. Then she stops because she says something else. “You have parents?”

The laugh again, warm like pavement on a sunny day. “Yeah, I’ve got parents.”

“You never said.”

“I thought it was assumed,” he comments.

Rey scowls, because it’s not assumed. Not everyone has parents, Kylo Ren. And she meant to say that out loud, but what comes out instead is, “Can you come and get me?”

“Yes,” he says, and there is no hesitation. She has a pang, because he should be with his family not with her.

Then he says, “Are you on the Strip?”

Rey tries to remember, thinking hard because she is smart. She knows she is _smart_. She could go to college someday. She could. Then, like magic, she remembers. _Crushing it, yet again_. “Yeah, that club in the Luxor. Or near it. I don’t know.”

“Okay, I’ll be there in twenty minutes. Can you meet me in the hotel lobby?”

“Maybe,” she mumbles. Maybe this is a bad idea. Maybe she shouldn’t meet him. She could run. She still has that Greyhound ticket. What would it matter if she went to jail if she could just live an actual life. Her mind wanders.

“Maybe the Grand Canyon.”

“Rey, don’t hang up.”

She hangs up, because he’s so _bossy._ Bossy bossy sexy sexy. A red light washes over Rey and she is on fire again, suddenly. It’s like a tide has washed her in a memory until suddenly that’s all there is, and the gambling den is on fire around her. Like it never ended and was always here, in this nightclub, contained in that beam of light. Time passes like that for a while as the light passes over her. Maybe ten minutes. Maybe fifteen. Who knows. She does not know.

When she lifts her head, there is someone kneeling across from her, peering into her eyes. A bouncer, she thinks at first, but then it’s not a bouncer. It’s a guy with sunken eyes and a baseball cap. She knows him, and her head reels and she kicks her leg out from where she’s sitting, knocking him clumsily in the knee so that his balance is unsteadied.

His crouch wobbles and he grabs for her leg. He touches her for all of one second before she kicks him hard in the gut and he rolls back, maybe stoned or maybe high, it doesn’t matter. Her shoes are off and she is fleeing away from him. From Tim. From Plutt. From the whole damn thing.

She’s going to be sick if she doesn’t make it out of this dark, glittering room. She’s going to catch on fire but inside her mind. Her phone beeps and she looks down. Kylo Ren is pulling up to the Luxor.

A hand grips her upper arm. She forgets how to remember what happens after that, except that Kylo is going to be so, so mad when she kills whoever is touching her.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Setup chapters are so laborious to write that I like to just post two chapters of it in one chapter so I only have to upload it once.  
>    
> also: AHHHHHHHH TLJ ON FRIDAY. I MAY DIE. I live in fear of spoilers right now. I'm basically on a media fast because I'm afraid to see anything, but if any of you guys have Star Wars blogs that you won't post spoilers to, will you leave 'em below? 
> 
> As always, I would just generally love to hear your thoughts in the comments below. Thank you!


	10. Equal and Opposite

**Chapter 10.**

**Equal and Opposite.**

_Rey_

She’s a being of pure instinct.

She steps forward and to the right to move well out of striking range, but the grip is firm on her shoulder and he holds on to her, his fingers digging into her shoulder. So she grips the hand on her shoulder and bends forward and down, ducking out from underneath the unbalanced man behind her.

The world spins uneasily as she breaks free, because this move is seriously so much easier when she’s not drunk. Her head swings around to look back at the guy behind her, meeting his eyes as they both stagger back amid the press of people. She doesn’t know him, but she knows the type. A grabber. The greater concern is where the bagger is. And then it hits her.

Fucking Tim _._

Predictably, the guy in front of her reaches for her, his hands closing on her wrist as her addled brain tries to keep up. She twists that, too, twirling it out of his hand before he can close it too tight. Rey fights like water, moving down and away at the slightest incline.

She takes a step back and he mirrors it, and it’s not hot like when Ren matches her. Which is a totally pointless thing to think about, because she’s going to have to get rid of this guy now or she’ll never see him again. Rey wishes for her knife. Or a big ass stick. Instead, she throws her shoe at him in what is simultaneously the dumbest trick in the book or a stroke of drunken genius, because he flinches like a goddamn rookie and Rey _runs_.

Hand to hand combat was never her forte, and she’s definitely not about to try it in a dark club with a few hundred people dancing around. Last thing she needs is attention drawn to her. It doesn’t even occur to her to scream. It never has.

Pushing through the crowds, light and sound blur around her as everything narrows back down from the expanse of things the past two weeks have brought into her life. There are only her feet on the ground, her other shoe in her hand, and the door at the other end of the room that leads out to the lobby. A lobby with people and maybe an elevator she can dart into before anyone catches her.

She shoves against bodies, almost blind as a hysterical fear roars in her ears.

She is drunk. She wishes to god she weren’t drunk. She struggles to train her mind behind her, to get it to pick out the sound of someone following her, but it takes a minute to remember to run and listen behind her at the same time.

But she gets it, and the sound of a large person pushing through many people rises above their noises of protest and the sound of running feet audible even above the clatter of the music. Rey can feel a predator a mile away, but the door is closer than he is to her, illuminated only by those legally mandated bright red exit signs that always make her think of 80’s movies.

She slams into the crash bar, pushing at the heavy metal and gasping as the swirling in her brain comes to a painful, jarring stop on contact. The door moves and then a body _slams_ into her, shoving her forward into the little room between the club and the lobby. She thinks they build these things to stop all that light from diluting the darkness, but right now it’s the site of a quiet and furious struggle between Rey and the guy trying to bang her head against the wall.

Fighting in a pitch black room the size of a walk in closet was never going to be easy, but the hands that wrap around her neck have adapted to Rey’s tricks, pushing her back against the wall and tightening their grip until she sees bright spots. He’s not trying to kill her, she tries to remind herself, but it’s impossible not to panic.

Half-blind with fear and claustrophobia, she digs the heel of her other shoe into his shoulder, smacking him with the heavy, pointy thing again and again until he reaches one hand out to grab for it, probably out of sheer annoyance. As air floods her system, Rey brings her knee up hard and the guy staggers back, just like in a movie. Her eyes have adjusted to the darkness, and in the half second of freedom Rey _lunges_ for the door to the lobby.

The light that fills the tiny room is almost more obliterating than the darkness, but she staggers forward anyway as the drunkenness and the oxygen deprivation and the sudden sensory overload flood her mind. She has to get out of here. She stumbles forward, finding herself in a long service corridor and _not_ the bustling lobby she’d been expecting. Rey curses, because she should have known it wouldn’t be that simple. Damn these casinos and their deliberately confusing layouts. It’s some kind of service hallway, long and lit by grim overhead fluorescents.

Rey stumbles forward, corralling her racing thoughts and her clumsy limbs into a full-throttle run. She’s not stronger than whoever this guy is, but she’s damn sure she’s faster. Especially since she’s not currently suffering from a blow to her groin. She snorts a laugh, but it dies when she hears the doors bang open. She doesn’t look back.

The corridor isn’t long, but the ceiling is low and the sound of her breathing and his yells echo in a nightmarish mix of fear and sound. It’s definitely a service tunnel, because that’s the only reason anyone would ever build a hallways this poorly lit and made of solid fucking concrete. The doors at the end race towards her as her bare feet fly across the cold concrete. The fluorescents overhead buzz.

She’s been in tunnels like this before, and she knows they either open onto parking lots or lobbies. She slams the door open onto an almost empty parking lot, concrete and looking out onto the gleam of LED signboards and roaring traffic of Vegas a story below her. It’s a valet lot, she thinks, or maybe just a disused parking lot. Rey could cry.

Brightly lit and offering absolutely no cover, there is no place to hide, no way out but through. The doors slam open as the guy runs for her, but Rey is already halfway across the parking lot with nothing even close to a plan.

Her breaths come short and fast, and it’s so hard to make herself turn to the stairwell she can see at the other end. She feels the fatigue gnawing at the edges of her consciousness as the adrenaline that has been propelling her forward drains her energy. She can’t keep this pace up. She’s a sprinter, not a distance runner, and she needs to get somewhere where there are lots and lots of people.

She thinks of Kylo.

“Fuck,” she mutters to no one in particular, hurtling across the pavement toward the concrete stairwell. Her feet are going to _ache_ tomorrow if she survives this, but she reaches the goddamn staircase and takes the first step way the fuck too fast. She nearly throws herself over the railing that separates the open stairwell from the night air as she hits the side of it at almost full speed. It’s only her firm grip on the banister that saves her from plunging headlong over the side.

She rights herself, cursing the death of her forward momentum, and throws herself down the rest of the stairs to scrabble like a cat when she lands on the ground level, springing out of the enclosed stairwell and veering to the left. She’s out from underneath the ramp, her feet slamming on the sidewalk that connects the ramp to the lobby, the _blessed_ lobby whose side entrance she can see a few hundred feet away.

The golden light from the valet booth calls to her like a god damn beacon, and she has a second of pure relief because she’s going to make it. There’s a black car idling at the valet’s circle, and Rey is about to cry out for attention when the arm yanks around her torso and Rey goes flying back into his chest, her head ringing as the guy drags her out of sight of the valet, cursing and muttering as Rey claws and scratches at him like an enraged cat, trying to scream but unable to catch her damn breath.

“Get _off,_ ” she hisses, though it’s almost soundless as she kicks at his shins with her feet and digs her nails into the arm around her waist. Fighting, squirming, so fucking tired her mind feels like it’s going to short circuit.

“Knock it off,” the guy growls in her ear, his other arm pressing against her windpipe.

“Asshole,” Rey rasps.

Then Poe fucking Dameron appears, running straight at them like a god damn vision of fury, and punches the guy holding her so hard that both he and Rey go flying backward. They twist as they fall, and when they hit the ground she’s half caught under the weight of the man on top of her. She rasps out a silent scream as the guy’s head hits the concrete with a sound like someone dropping a bowling ball. Rey’s whole body hurts like a bitch and she stays down for one second as both she and her would-be captor react to this new an unexpected development.

Then Poe drags Rey from underneath the guy, scraping her knees and bruising the already bloodied skin on her palms. Rey curses in pain as strained tendons stretch and bruises pull, but she rights herself anyway as Poe hauls her to her feet. Gasping and shaking under the effect of the adrenaline, alcohol, and pain, Rey rubs her temples, trying to orient herself. She looks up just in time to see Poe kick her attacker in the ribs so hard that she hears something crack. Then he does it again. Then he reaches down to lift his head up by his hair and smash his face against the concrete.

The violence of it is so staggering that Rey takes a step back, and then another, and then another. A thousand memories of violence fill her brain and Rey is right back in the thick of her fear, like it has never ever left.

Poe is ferocious. A professional.

“Poe,” Rey says, feeling herself start to hyperventilate. “ _Poe_.”

He looks up at her, his chest heaving, his eyes blazing. His eyes focus on her and they exchange a wordless, silent look of mutual shock, like neither of them can believe there is someone else here to witness this moment of intense, private violence.

Rey thinks about Kylo Ren. How he’d punched the guy in the bar for threatening Finn. How he’d barked a command and sent six people running to put out a fire because she’d said four words. How he carries a gun and reaches for it on instinct. How he’d promised that no one would ever hurt her again. How this guy had tried anyway and paid for it. The images and sound flash before her eyes, blinking in and out of existence like low resolution photos on a digital camera screen.

Rey’s head rings, and Poe’s expression softens as he lets go of the grabber like he’s touched something dirty. He shakes his head and sighs, rubbing his neck.

The guy on the ground is breathing, but if he’s conscious, he’s smart enough not to move.

Then Finn nearly runs into them with a shouted “ _Jesus_ Christ are you okay?” that has them all flinching.

Finn looks at the body and then his eyes flit up to Rey. She registers all this dimly, but the feeling doesn’t come back into her limbs until she is wrapped in Finn’s arms, tugged against him in a hug that stops just short of being crushing. She presses her bloodied palms against the back of his suit jacket, burying her face in his neck. She wishes she were the sort of girl who sobbed, because she imagines it would feel damn good to let the feelings out of her body in the form of a harmless sound.

Poe looks at his phone and curses. “Ren’s parked at the concierge. Waiting for you.”

Rey looks up from Finn, gently disentangling herself.

Stifling a wince at the pain, she says, “No one tells him anything.”

There’s a beat of silence, then Poe snorts a laugh. “You’re joking.”

“You want to tell him we lost sight of her?” Finn points out, his voice grim.

Poe blinks. Rey swivels her head around to look at him, because there’s something odd about what he’s said, but her thoughts are jumbled. She feels cold all over. Then Poe cracks a grim smile and nods.

“Yeah,” he sighs. “Guess I’d like to live until at least Christmas.”

“A conspiracy, then,” says Finn gravely.

Poe’s not laughing, and his eyes land on her, serious and very sober. “Rey, what the fuck was that? You took off. Who the hell is this guy?”

She can’t tell them the truth, but equally she doubts she can lie effectively right now. Half-truth it is, then.

“He dragged me to a corner. Some kind of creep, I guess,” Rey says, trying to remember how sober people shrug. She kind of yanks her shoulder up and drops it back down, which she’s pretty sure isn’t right.

Finn frowns. “And he… chased you?”

Rey rolls her eyes, and the gesture sends shooting pain behind her eyes that might be some sort of karmic fuck you from the universe for lying.

“Guess he can’t take a fucking hint.”

The man on the floor groans, and to Rey’s surprise, it’s Finn who kicks him this time. Poe grins, and the look that passes between them shouldn’t be half as sweet as it is, considering the context.

She hates to interrupt it, but she’s not going to be able to stay upright much longer, and Rey refuses to faint.

Deferring to the experts, she says, “How’re we going to explain this to Ren?”

His voice is right behind her. “Explain what to me?”  

Rey whirls around, startled almost out of her senses by the sudden appearance of Kylo Ren on the edge of their little group. His hand snakes around her waist and he catches her as she sways, steadying her. He draws her fractionally closer into the iron wall of his body as his eyes flit from the man on the ground to Poe with his bloody knuckles and coming to rest on Finn’s look of naked guilt. Then he looks at her, and she sees the burning, subdued energy buried just underneath his mask of control.

He holds her gaze, and this time it’s not the alcohol that makes her head swim. In the silence, Rey’s head clears. She’s expecting him to lose his shit, go thermonuclear. But all he does is to tug her away from the man on the ground, and his non-reaction is probably scarier than anything he could have said or done.

In the distance, the sound of pulsing music, people walking, and cars passing filter though. But in this side service road, they’re completely alone.

Ren’s voice is icy. “Someone tell me why Rey is shoeless and bloody.”

Poe opens his mouth, but Rey cuts him off. “This guy tried to dance with me. Wouldn’t take no for an answer. I ran off, he chased me. Poe took care of it for me.”

She tries to make it sound final, even casual, but she can hear the fear in her words and knows that there’s no fucking way she’s pulling this off. Ren looks down at her, frowning, and then his gaze shifts to Poe.

“I see,” Ren says coolly, still looking straight at Poe as some wordless conversation passes between them. “And you _let_ her run off?”

Poe doesn’t flinch. “You ever tried to catch that girl when she’s in a hurry?”

“Pretty good at it, actually,” he snaps.

Sensing some looming conflict but unable to quite wrap her head around it, Rey has her second genius idea of the evening. She can fix this. She can stop this from escalating.

She turns to him, leaning hard against the strength of his body. “I’m cold. Take me home. Please?”

She can be a damsel for five minutes, right? It isn’t weakness if it’s strategy. And Poe helping her wasn't a damsel situation, because she’d covered for him in return. They’re both _lying_. It’s equal.

Ren looks at her, his jaw set and his brow furrowed. “My car is waiting for us. Finn, take her.”

Rey swallows, because there’s something intensely serious about Ren’s expression that she’s seen there before. Cool, collected Kylo Ren is about to lose his shit.

“He’s just some guy. Let’s go,” she murmurs.

His hand grips hers, pressing it into the leather of his jacket like he’s trying to anchor her there.

“I am not a nice man,” Ren murmurs blackly, looking right at her.

“He already paid for what he did,” Rey says, and it’s probably true.

“Not enough,” he growls, his eyes flicking back to him.

Leaning her head on his shoulder, she tilts her face up to his and says, “I’ll stay at your place tonight if you come away.”

“That’s fucking right you’re staying at my place,” he growls, low and deadly. “Right after I take care of this.”

“Ren, please,” Rey says, feeling obstinate and tired and scared.

Ren looks down at her, his eyes blazing. “No.”

She takes a step back, feeling her body scramble to come up with some reaction, some feeling that makes sense in response to this. She flits through anger, betrayal, fear, gratitude, and, desire, and she expects it to settle on one feeling but it just keeps shifting.

Finn takes Rey gently by the elbow. Ren’s eyes are locked on the man on the ground, but he takes his jacket off and stiffly drapes it around Rey’s shoulders. Rey watches him complete his transformation from the irreverent, funny man she knows into a person she recognizes but doesn’t trust. Someone dangerous.  

“Kylo?” Rey murmurs, too tired to argue with Finn as he tugs her away from the warmth of Ren’s body.

“The car, Finn,” Ren barks.

_I am not a nice man._

Rey doesn’t understand the new feeling in her chest. There isn’t quite a word for it. She leans her head against Finn’s side and walks blindly out of the dark.

* * *

 

_Ren_

He and Poe make eye contact for a long five seconds as Finn and Rey stumble away, Rey with her head tucked into Finn’s shoulder and Finn looking nervously back at him. Something fucking happened tonight, and he’s not able to fully verbalize how much it pisses him off that he doesn’t know the whole thing. That they’re all trying to keep him in the dark about it.

He’d thought it would be fine to let her out of his sight for one fucking night and this fucking happens? Some textbook con artist asshole tries to nab her out of a fucking hotel, with security cameras everywhere, and chases her out of the building? It’s like the universe has a sick sense of humor or something.

But then again, he shouldn’t have been surprised. He knows better than anyone what happens when these organizations start to go south. People turn tail, get desperate, try creative solutions to escalating problems.

Only difference is that he’s never had a personal stake in these dramas before, never felt like his heart might beat itself out of his chest at the thought of one of them getting hurt. He’s never cared so much about someone that seeing her frightened and standing at the edge of the violence makes him want to take out his gun and end the problem in a way that breaks every promise he ever made to his mother when he went legitimate.

“What the fuck happened?” Ren says to Poe, keeping his tone _carefully_ neutral.

Poe’s fists clench, like he can sense the simmering violence. “She took off. I went after her, but it was damn hard to find her in the club. Finn went to the upper level and I scanned the ground. We saw her running from some guy, was all I could do to keep up. Rey is a damn fast runner.”

“He never tried with her,” Ren says bluntly, taking in the sneakers and the deep pockets of man on the ground’s jacket. Rey’s such a shit liar, and this guy has lacerations all over his neck. Could be Poe, but Ren’s money is on Rey and her raccoon style fighting moves.

Poe looks away, his voice thick and furious. “No. I don’t know what he was doing, really. But she didn’t dance with anyone but us, as far as I know.”

He looks at the groaning mass of man at his feet, and he leans down, debating his course of action.

White hot fury has been clenching his teeth for nearly ten minutes now, and it takes every ounce of his self-control not to add a new list of injuries to this guy’s list. Broken fingers, maybe.

“So, who sent you?” Ren murmurs to the fucker on the ground.

Poe gives him a look. Ren ignores it.

His eyes are closed, but Ren knows he can hear him. He can sense weakness in these quiet moments of total desperation. “You came here tonight to get someone, right? Your boss is a local? Probably a dealer? He told you, what, this girl had failed to pay?”

“Piss off,” the guy hisses.

“What’s your name?” Ren says to the man on the ground.

The guy says nothing, so Ren turns to Poe. “He got any ribs left to break?”

Poe shakes his head and doesn’t even laugh. “Sorry.”

Ren sighs. “Okay, then. There are two ways you can pay me back for trying to make off with my girl. You can go back to your boss, tell him what happened here, and bring me back enough photos and data on his movements to get him indicted. That’s option one.”

Poe draws in a sharp breath. Ren brushes his hands on his jeans as he stands, trying to wipe off the grime of this whole experience. “Or, I can swing by your house sometime this week and eliminate your debt in a different way.”

The guy’s eyes open as Ren reaches into his suit jacket and takes out his business card. He flicks it out so that it lands on his chest. The man’s eyes shut tight again.

Ren glances at Poe, who just holds up the guy’s driver’s license. Ren nods, because he’s still fucking pissed at him even though he did his job.

They walk away, confident the guy can’t call the cops without getting hauled for whatever rep he’s almost certainly got. Once they’re out of view of the man on the ground, the lobby comes back into view and Ren can see Finn leaning down to talk to Rey through the open passenger door of his car, his expression gentle. Rey is in there, safe for once, and it should calm him down but it fucking doesn’t.

Ren turns around and looks back at Poe, his anger and fear abruptly boiling over. He grabs Poe by the shoulder and pushes him hard into the concrete wall of the hotel, not caring that people can see. Poe’s wiry and tough, but there was never any contest between the two of them in a brute strength face off.

But Poe doesn’t fight him.

“You fucked up,” Ren growls.

Poe sets his jaw. “You tried keeping track of that girl for more than half an hour? Damn near impossible.”

“You _lost_ her, and he tried to take her,” Ren hisses, hating that he’s losing control but unable to stop it. The adrenaline of the past thirty minutes has blinded him to the root of the feeling, kept him rigidly moving forward. Deal with the problem. Work the system. Break the issue down into its smallest possible component part and deal with items 1, 2, and 3. In that order.

Poe grits his teeth. “I know.”

“You _know_?” Ren says, his voice increasing in strength. “I trusted you to keep her safe for one night, and you failed.”

Poe is undaunted. “You can’t save someone who doesn’t want to be saved.”

Ren lets him drop. “Fuck you. Just fuck you, Dameron.”

Poe staggers forward, massaging the indents of his jacket on his neck. “You want to help her? Fine, but she has to make up her own mind to live, Ren. You can’t do that for her.”

“She’s under my protection,” Ren snaps. “I thought you understood that.”

Poe looks back, unafraid and fierce in the stark light of the Strip. “I know how you feel about her. I know what it is that’s happening between you two. But Rey’s got her own shit to work out, shit you can’t help her with or save her from.”

“She’s going to be fucking fine,” Ren snarls.

Poe nods. “I know she is. But it’s going to take a lot more than just taking down one slum lord for that girl to have a normal life again.”

Ren’s sense of humor returns out of nowhere, and it is such a relief to feel something other than blinding that he almost smiles. “Luckily for me, she doesn’t want a normal life. And she can’t have one anyway, since she’s dating me.”

Poe looks warily at him, and Ren feels the worst of the anger between them fade.

“She your girlfriend now?”

It’s not even a question. “Rey’s mine. The rest of this is just bullshit.”

Poe’s wary look turns into a half-finished smirk. “She know that yet?”

Ren glances over at his car where he can just see the edge of her bare foot, bloody and red as it nudges the ground. Finn is holding her hand. He can’t see her face.

“One thing at a time, Dameron.”

XX

Kylo Ren never wants to go back to the Strip again. The minute they’re clear of the thick of it, Ren pulls into a McDonald’s and orders her a hamburger. She’s asleep through the drive through, the adrenaline and drunkenness working their magic on her nervous system.

But when he presses the warm burger into her hands her eyes flutter open. She looks up at him in awe.

“Oh, it’s you,” she says.

“Eat that.”

Rey blinks. He’s not sure she’s really awake, but she tears off the wax paper and presses the burger to her mouth with the desperation of a hungry child, her head lolling back on the leather seats as she chews. She tucks her bare feet under her body, squirming with a mouth full of burger.

“You okay?” he murmurs, his car idling in the fast food parking lot.

Rey nods, looking down at the burger like it has something very important to tell her.

XX

He’s not sure if it’s the exhaustion or the drunkenness, but when he parks his car at home and opens the door, Rey is obedient for the first time probably ever. He asks her to sit up, turn around, reach her arms out, and she fucking does. Her eyes are half closed and she’s making little mumbling noises of distress that aren’t quite words, but fuck all, she’s as docile as a goddamn kitten when he carries her from the car.

Is it massively fucked that he’s as turned on by sleepy Rey as ferocious, half-starved coyote Rey?

His garage light is a warm honey yellow, and he’s nearly boiling over with a mix of suppressed anger and relief that has his hands shaking as he carries solid strength of her body through the garage and into his house. The loll of her head against his shoulder and the way her hands fist against the fabric of his jacket soothe him.

The anger doesn’t go away. It may not ever go away. But it dulls slightly as he remembers that she’s fine, that they’re back at the fortress of his home where nothing can happen to her.

He hits the button to close his garage door, and as the satisfying sounds of his security system chime the all clear, he can finally, finally relax. He carries her up the stairs, running his thumbs across the already bruised skin of her knees and inhaling the scent of her hair.

At the top of the steps, he hesitates. He wants to put her in his bed, but he has a hunch that if she wakes up and doesn’t remember where she is, she may stab him in the neck with the knife he’d given her before she thinks to look at his face. His savage, fearful girl.

She nuzzles into his chest and he thinks that it wouldn’t be the worst way to go, all things considered. He puts her in the guest room and prays to god she’s there in the morning when he wakes up.

X

It’s probably three a.m. when he wakes up to the weight of her body crawling into bed next to him.

He’d been sleeping lightly, tossing and turning in the throes of a vague and unsettling dream, when the sound of his door opening wakes him right the fuck up. But he hears her soft breathing and the smell of that cinnamon scent that radiates out of her body. He relaxes as she lifts the duvet up and slips in next to him.

She doesn’t touch him, just lays there next to him, breathing deeply and slowly. Once her breathing stills, he risks opening his eyes. She’s _right there_ in front of him. In his bed. Dressed in that same dress and the smudged makeup.

Of all the wonders, it’s Rey in his bed. Fuck if this isn’t a little different than he’d imagined, but it’s something, at least. Feeling a little drunk with a savage, greedy pleasure, he reaches out and brushes a stray hair out of her face and her eyes fly open, wide and terrified for an instant.

“Hey, it’s okay,” Ren whispers. Her eyes relax, just slightly. But she sits up like she’s going to leave. He reaches out for her, grasping her by the hand. He has to calm her the fuck down, because he’s not going to let her leave tonight. Psychologically, he can’t handle the thought of her loose in a world that sends men to get her. A world where she doesn’t let him cover for her.

“It’s okay,” he growls. “Stay.”

Several long seconds pass, and then very slowly, Rey lays back down on the pillow next to his, her eyes open.

“Hey,” he says.

“Hey,” she whispers back.

They lock eyes, and then he caves. Like fucking always. He reaches out to tug her a little closer, his fingers wrapping around the small of her waist to tug her forward. He doesn’t try and pull her against him, just closes the distance so they can look at each other. She peers up at him like she’s never seen him before. Then he notices the tears, and fuck, why is he always accidentally making her cry?

“I’m sorry,” she mutters. “For getting so drunk.”

He shakes his head and sends his hair flying into his face. “Don’t be sorry.”

“I made you pick me up. I was so drunk, and now I climb into your bed, and-”

“Don’t fucking apologize,” he murmurs, and it comes out wrong but the feeling behind is a concentrated need to just take this pain away from her. “Are you okay?”

Rey smiles weakly, brushing the back of her hand against her cheek. “My whole body hurts.”

“What else hurts, Rey?”

Her thumb runs across the soft fabric of his pillowcase, her hair pooling in a riotous mess around her face. She doesn’t bother to brush it away.

“You scared me,” she whispers. His heart twists in his chest like something foreign has crawled inside it and his muscles are trying to _crush_ it.

He doesn’t know what to say. He’s not sorry for what he did. He’s never made a secret of what he is or what he does.

His voice is ragged with remembered fear and fury. “I know I did.”

Something flickers in her gaze and a little of her spark returns.

“You ordered me around,” Rey says, meeting his eyes. They are glinting and still a little drunk, but they hold his. “Don’t do that.”

“You should sleep,” he mutters, unwilling to fucking lie to her about this, because it’s just a reality that if she’s in danger like that, he’s going to be the one giving commands. They’re not going to have a fight about this right now. She doesn’t argue with him, thank fuck, and maybe she understands what he’s trying to say because she seems to calm down.

Though he’s not stupid enough to think she accepts what he’s said. Just that she’s decided she’s going to live to fight another day, which is a close second.

“Come here,” he growls, lifting up the covers and gesturing her over to the space next to his. He won’t pull her. She has to come on her own.

“I don’t…” she starts to say, but then she stops, biting her lip.

“Rey, I’m tired. Just let me hold you. No strings attached, swear to god,” he says, hating it because it’s a god damn lie. All of it.

And suddenly the fear and the lying threaten to overwhelm him, and he’s so god damn tired of watching her self-destruct alone while he plots behind her back like some kind of double agent. It’s like his life has fractured into two people who sit increasingly ill at ease with each other. He likes his job, who he is. But she’d been afraid of him and Poe in that alley. Not the man on the ground, of _him._

And that makes him feel fucking uncomfortable.

But then she moves to his side, turning herself so she’s tucked into the space beneath his chin with her back pressed against his chest, and the nauseous, frustrated feeling evaporates. She nestles against him in an embrace as old as humanity, and it feels so nice, so fucking nice, to hold her like this. Indulging himself, he presses his nose into her hair and inhales as Rey squirms around, trying to get comfortable.

He inhales the smell of her, his hand settling on the smooth skin of her exposed thigh. He lets his thumb trace a few circles into her skin as Rey squirms against him. His breath hitches at the friction. There is no hiding his erection from her, but he’s not embarrassed. He wants her to know, even though she’s still fucking drunk and he’s not going to add _that_ to the already insane mix of the evening.

“You gonna hold me like this all night?” she says, sounding a little breathless.

“Yes,” he mumbles, drunk off the pleasure of her closeness. She moves her hip and he presses into her, shameless and hungry for her. For a long time, she’s silent, and he thinks she’s fallen asleep until he hears her voice come very quietly out from under his arm.

“I am sorry,” she mumbles. “For all the trouble.”

Ren grunts. “I shouldn’t have left you alone out there.”

“I’m fine,” she murmurs.

“Poe beat that guy up in front of you, didn’t he?” Ren says.

Rey stiffens. “Just… a little.”

“Not the first time you’ve seen that, was it?” he murmurs, letting his hand rub circles into her skin.

Rey is quiet again. For a long time.

“No,” she whispers.

“Did you imagine the Grand Canyon?” he murmurs, pressing a kiss into her neck that turns into a yawn.

Her voice is feather light, kind of watery. She’s falling asleep, he realizes. “No. I thought about you.”

He doesn’t dream at all that night. He doesn’t have to.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Literally just bragging here but this chapter is also 6k words long and I'm so fucking proud of myself. And sorry for the delay, I had the work week from hell but now it's over and I'm BACK.
> 
> also: DID YOU SEE TLJ?? I LOVED IT. SWEET SWEET VALIDATION, FOLKS. Fun (tagged) spoilery content on [my Tumblr.](https://violetwilson.tumblr.com/) if you want to hang out. 
> 
> Would love to know any thoughts of yours in the comments!


	11. Wounds

**Chapter 11**.

**Wounds**

_Rey_

Rey has never been good at giving herself stitches.

Basic bandage etiquette, sure, but stitches are hard and always have been. It hurts a little, for one thing, but more than that it’s frustrating. Needles are never sharp enough, the thread never goes in clean, and the stitches invariably come out messy. She’s given stitches to a few people over the years, even became a sort of de facto medical person for the people who hung out around Plutt’s old place. Back when there was room for someone who got too high or too low to crash in privacy.

Hell, she’d given Plutt stitches twice, back when he still ran a few seedy boxing rings.

But it’s been a while since she got injured in the line of duty, and she reflects with grim humor that it’s because it’s been a long time since she didn’t do exactly what was asked of her.

Ren’s bathroom is full of bright, brutal desert sunlight, and she sits in her party dress on the edge of the counter with her arm yanked uncomfortably forward. Her head aches, her knees hurt, and her feet are killing her, so physically speaking she’s not doing so hot. Mentally, only slightly better. It’s early enough that she’s banking that Ren will sleep right through the repair job and she can steal a pair of his shoes and walk the few miles to her bus stop.

She drags her mind back from the fog of her thoughts to the present. She has a wound, and she needs to see to it before she can get out of here. Well, she has a handful of wounds. But one thing at a time.

She’s sterilized the needle with vodka, because she couldn’t find any rubbing alcohol in Ren’s bathroom. But she’d seen where he keeps his vodka the night of his party, and it felt like karma that she’d had to use the same substance that had gotten her into her trouble last night to fix it.

The universe can be such a bitch.

The smell of the vodka almost makes her throw up, but she swallows it down and grits her teeth as she stabs herself with a needle and thread. A drifter at the old gambling facility had shown a thirteen year old Rey how to give yourself stitches. The key, he’d said, is to sterilize the needle the way you would with any other needle you’re injecting yourself with. Since vodka was always easier to find than rubbing alcohol, this isn’t the first time she’s patched herself up with it.

Phas had said once that it would probably be better just to bandage it, but Rey finds something kind of satisfying about it. Her stitches may be crude, but they tether her to herself. No fuss, just a little pain and a scar for the memory.

Though, reflecting on last night, memory is something she could do without. God, it had all gone so wrong. Just dancing, just having a nice time. And then her past had come back. In the light of day, it’s harder to think about. Club fights, fleeing the scene, almost ending up thrown into a utility van and dragged back to Plutt for whatever sort of horrible discipline he would try to use to get her to bend.

And then Ren had seen the whole thing. Not just him, but Poe and Finn, two people who definitely don’t know this side of her. She’d woken up to a string of concerned texts from Finn that testify to that. And she shouldn’t really be surprised that the seams between her personal and professional lives are getting closer and closer together, because that’s how seams are supposed to be, right?

But still. It grates on her to think that they know this about her now. That she’s the kind of girl who people feel confident they can drag out of a club. That she’s at risk.

She pulls the last stitch through and gets to the hardest part: tying the knot.

She has the end of the thread in her hand, and she runs the vodka over her hands again to sterilize them as best as she can before she starts the irritating process of trying to knot the thread using one hand. She gets it done after almost five minutes of trying, and she looks at it with a hangman's satisfaction. Done.

Then the bathroom door opens and Kylo Ren, shirtless and bleary eyed, meets her gaze.

He looks surprised. Really surprised, actually, and Rey realizes she’s sitting on his bathroom counter in her dress from the night before with a bottle of vodka on the counter and her bare feet dirtying the pristine marble.

“Sorry,” Rey blurts, her hands frozen on the thread, “I was going to leave but it started bleeding again.”

He makes a kind of grunt noise that might be displeasure and crosses to her. Rey tucks her feet up so they’re out of his way, thinking he’s going to wash his face, but he just leans down and takes her face in his, pressing a kiss against her lips. His hands twist in her hair and she straightens her spine to lean up, pressing her hands against him. It’s the most unexpected, sweetest kiss she’s ever had while giving herself bootleg stitches, and his mouth on hers is hot and warm.

When he breaks the kiss, his eyes are molten. “Gotta say, fucking surprised you’re still here.”

Rey points at her feet. “Extenuating circumstances.”

She hopes her irritation doesn't show. It’s not that she wants to leave him, exactly, just that she would have preferred to tend her wounds and nurse her hangover in the privacy of her own apartment, not do it here in his temple to minimalism and stone surfaces. But the look he levels on her feet and the abrasion on her arm is clinical. His eyes flit to the vodka and his frown deepens. 

He brushes her hand away when she brings it up to hide the shit job she’s done on the stitches, leaning his head down to look closer.

“You did this?” he says, running his thumb just outside the edge and making Rey grit her teeth in anticipation of pain. But his touch is gentle, and it doesn’t hurt.

“Yeah. Sorry, again,” she mumbles.

When he reaches for the end of the thread she brushes his hand away. “I just got it, don’t mess it up.”

He gives her a dark look. “I’m taking you to a doctor.”

Rey groans. “This is why I was gonna leave before you got up.”

He points at her feet. “Those need seeing to.”

Rey pulls them under her body, wishing her body didn’t hurt so bad. “I already cleaned and sterilized them.”

Rey winces at that particular memory. Even diluting the alcohol with water, it hurt like a bitch. She'd bit down on a washcloth to stifle the cry. 

He shakes his head. “Ridiculous.”

“Like you could do better,” she snaps.

He raises a brow and crosses his arms, making his muscles flex on his bare chest. It should be illegal, how much better he looks than her. He says, “How’s your head?”

“Hurts,” Rey says primly, trying to force herself to think about anything other than how his body looks in the morning sunlight. She has to get out of here and get home, crash for a while. Clear her head. She needs a long bus ride and a strong cup of coffee.

“Huh,” he says blandly. “Must’ve been all the drinking.”

Rey wants to roll her eyes _so bad._ “No shit. This is why I don’t drink. Zero self control.”

“I thought maybe it was the whole, people try and kill you thing,” Ren says the slow, terrifying precision of which he is a goddamn master.

Rey blinks. “No one tried to kill me.”

“Just chase you through a parking lot for no reason?”

Rey burns. “I don’t want to talk about that.”

His silence is… loaded. Then, with no warning, he grabs her ankle from where she’s folded it under her thigh and tugs it out from underneath her. Rey squawks her protest as she falls back onto her ass on the counter, but he has her foot straightened out and is inspecting it before she can whack him away.

“This is fucked up,” he says to the raw skin of her foot. “You need a doctor.”

“No,” Rey says, more forcefully than she should. It’s just that doctors ask questions, file reports, do things. At least she’s pretty sure. Her medical history has been left largely to chance.

“Fine,” Ren says, “but you should at least get some bandages on them. You ran really hard on straight concrete. These’ll scab.”

“I _know_ ,” Rey says, twisting her foot around in his grasp. She’s dirty and in pain and her head hurts and Rey wants to be fucking alone _._ Never mind that Ren looks like a statue, and she doesn’t like that he associates the word “scab” with any fucking part of her body.

“I should have taken you to the ER last night,” he mutters.

Rey pulls at her foot but he holds onto it. “Like I said, I already sterilized it.”

Ren’s eyes rove around the counter and land on the vodka. His eyes widen as he understands why she really has it. 

“You sterilized your feet with _vodka?”_ he growls, looking genuinely pissed off.

Rey nods. “You didn’t have any isopropyl.”

His voice is a lesson in suppressed fury. “Alcohol is way the fuck too strong to be used on an open wound, Rey.”

Something about him is making her very nervous. And annoyed, because that’s not what she was taught.

“I didn’t know that,” she snaps, only half believing him. The pain means it’s working, surely?

“Fuck, Rey, I _have_ a first aid kit, you should have just woken me up,” he snaps. “I mean, fucking, like, Neosporin!”

His anger doesn’t make any sense to her, so she ignores it. Anyway, how can something as gooey and mild as antiseptic cream work more effectively than straight alcohol? She mentally rejects the idea.

“Didn’t your parents ever teach you that?” he snaps, and his eyes immediately widen a little as he realizes his mistake.

 _Fuck. That_. The only thing that could make this experience worse is the mention of her god damn parents, or lack-there-fucking-of. Rey yanks her foot free from his hand, not caring that his nostrils flare and his jaw clenches as he lets her slip through his fingers.

“I’ll see you around, Ren,” Rey snaps, hopping down from the counter and trying to decide how the hell she’s going to walk to the nearest bus stop with no shoes. She’s halfway to the door when she decides that she’s going to steal his work boots from the garage.

He’s right behind her as she reaches the bathroom door and storms through it in a righteous huff. He’s judging her, the asshole, when she’s the one who got herself out of her own mess, more or less? Fine, there had been an assist from Poe in there, too, but it’s not like she hasn’t done this a dozen times before. She’d never critique the way he worked, never judge his methods for getting by.

Neosporin? How the hell was she supposed to know? The asshole.

He has opened the blinds in his bedroom, letting in a punishingly bright and beautiful view of the pristine desert behind his house. The sky is a sharp, vibrant blue with clouds that look like spilled sugar trimming the distant edges of the mountains. His rumpled bed looks more comfortable than anything in the world, unmade and messed up in soft, dark linens, just like it had the first night she’d come in here and learned just how close he was to ruining everything.

He’s still that close to ruining everything. He’s always pushing her, and she has to get the hell out of here _right_ now. Preferably before her skull cracks open from the headache cutting her brain in half. She hears him pace into the room behind her.

“What’s your plan, huh?” he says as Rey snatches her phone from where it’s been plugged into his charger. She ignores the twist in her heart to imagine him plugging it in for her sometime last night. “You gonna storm off into the daylight and disappear? Or are we gonna talk about what the fuck last night was?”

“I have to get to work,” Rey snaps, stuffing the thing into her bra because it’s not like her dress has pockets. Her annoyance feels limitless.

“You don’t have any fucking _shoes,_ ” Ren snaps.

“Not the first time,” Rey snaps, hoping it stings him. "It's fine."

His hand comes down on her shoulder and tugs her around so she’s facing him, her back to the window and her heart hammering in her chest as he stares down at her, all shirtless and frowning and glowing in the light. He leaves his enormous hand on her shoulder like he’s trying to stop her from floating away, and she’s ashamed at the feelings his touch sends through her body, all pleasant tingles and dragging pleasure that makes something pool in her core at the physical evidence of the leashed strength he keeps in check.

She can feel it slipping, and it reminds her of last night even as it sends her heart fluttering in her chest.

“It’s not fucking fine,” he says, licking his bottom lip.

“Neither of us knowing anything about fine,” Rey snaps, and she moves her hand to brush his hand off her shoulder but he catches it instead, holding it up between them like he’s offering it to her or something. Her own fucking hand. If he feels the anger radiating off her hungover, bruised body he sure as hell doesn’t act like it.

“You know what I want?” he growls, leaning down. He doesn’t wait for her to answer. “I want you to take a shower and let me bandage your goddamn feet, Rey.”

She swallows. “You give this spiel to all the other girls who wake up here?”

“You know that I don’t. You know you’re an exception,” he says.

“Well I don't want to be,” she snaps.

His jaw clenches and she knows she’s gone too far. Hurt him. His scowl is so pronounced that she almost doesn’t notice when it shifts into something determined, a kind of wartime expression that is totally at odds with the faint smirk that spreads slowly on his lips.  

He leans down and wraps his arms around her torso, picking her up in one quick motion that has her head ringing and her blood boiling as the ground disappears from underneath her. Rey yells as he unceremoniously walks them back over to the bathroom. Without loosening his grasp an inch, he crosses to the shower and opens the glass door with a grunt of pain as she elbows him in the rib.

“Kylo Ren don’t you fucking _dare,”_ Rey snarls, hitting him with as much strength as her injured hands can muster. But he just turns the dial so the water comes cascading down from his crazy shower head. He holds a hand out to test the water temperature.

“Be good,” he growls.

“I swear to god if you put me in that thing I will cut off your fucking ears in your sleep,” Rey snaps, hearing how fucking batshit crazy she sounds but unable to stop the anger and the hurt and the pain from coming loose from her chest.

It feels good to fight like this. It’s a language she understands, and the fear leaves her body in the face of her wall of potent, all-consuming annoyance that he is still here, still holding onto her when all she wants is for him to drop her to the earth and leave her there.

“I’m not putting you in there,” Ren says calmly, withdrawing his hand and giving his palm a shake to loosen the water from it.

Rey blinks, stopping her fight for a minute to look up at the profile of his expression. He looks down at her, his grin positively savage.

“What-” she starts.

“I’m putting _us_ in there.”

Then he adjusts his grip on her and walks them both under the water.

The sensation of the warm water cascading over her is so startling that she’s momentarily grateful for his grip on her waist. His laugh is deep and rich, bouncing around the tile and glass enclosure of his shower as Rey’s hiss of protest echoes around. She wants to scream a protest but she doesn’t think her headache can endure any further exacerbation.

“See?” he says, grinning.

“Put me _down_ ,” Rey growls, her hair pressing wet and heavy against her hair as the silky material of her dress shifts and slips against his wetting skin.

He grins and does, and when her feet hit the tile again she tells herself to march straight out of the shower and into the desert. To never come back, because Kylo Ren is worse than a dead man, he is a total asshole who dragged her into a shower and had the audacity to tease her when her whole body feels like it’s rotting from the inside out.

But then he turns the heat up a little and the steaming hot water makes her moan with pleasure as the temperature eases some of the pain her back and shoulders. Her feet sting a little, but every other part of her feels better as a night’s worth of salt and dirt and grime loosen and lift off her body.

“You ass,” Rey murmurs. But her heart’s not in it and she closes her eyes against the riot of sheer goodness the water has sent through her shocked system. She remembers, all at once, that she loves hot showers. That Kylo Ren has good fucking ideas. That she likes him so much it freaks her out a little. That her hangover might not actually kill her.

His hand is gentle as it wraps around her waist and tugs her against the sodden fabric of his pajama pants, his bare chest warm even under the water. She leans against him, resting as her body settles. She feels just slightly less like she’s going to throw up, and as a minute of total bliss passes, Rey feels about 70% more like a human being again.

His hand strokes her back. “Better?”

Refusing to look at him, she mutters, “This is bad for my stiches, isn’t it?”

His voice is grim. “Turn around, I’m going to look at the damage.”

She groans, but humors him, too warm to consider brushing him off. His hands are gentle as they run over the wet skin of her neck, which is bruising from the whole choking thing, and run down the edge of the marks to the tops of her shoulders and down her arms. There are lacerations there from his hands on hers, and Rey runs her fingers over them too, right where the pads of his fingers have traced a hot trail.

She braces her free hand against the wall of the shower as his hand reaches down to her hand and lifts it up, pressing himself flush against her back as he looks at her palm over her shoulder. Rey can feel every inch of him through the thin, soggy material of his sweats, all muscles and hard lines.

His fingers lace with her own and Rey leans hard against the arm she’s braced against the wall as he presses a kiss into her neck. The sensation of him between her fingers, his chest pressed against her back, his mouth on her neck, is so much sensation that it’s almost painful. She lets out a shaky breath and he makes a _hmm_ noise into her skin.

“You know I’m going to make him pay,” Ren murmurs into her skin. Rey stiffens.

“Who?”

“You know who,” he mutters.

“It won’t help,” Rey says back, trying to stamp down the fear and anger that threaten the peace she feels in this moment.

“I’m not asking your opinion,” Ren says, quietly, almost gently. “I just needed you to know.”

Rey exhales slowly, but she’s too tired, too desperate to feel good to argue. “He’s nobody. Just don’t kill him.”

He’s quiet for a long time as the water runs over them.

“That a priority for you, or…?”

Rey thinks of the death toll she has seen in her short life. She thinks of that awful fire, the fear, the death. She grew that death with her own hands and now it belongs to her, a mark as permanent as the burns on her skin. She’d given herself stitches that day, too, and cried and cried over them.

“Yeah,” she whispers.

There is a crash coming in her future. She can feel it. Last night doesn’t feel real yet, but she knows it will. The same way that rocks will inevitably crumble from even the strongest cliff, she’s going to need to have a good hard cry. But not now. Not yet.

His hands are gentle, caressing against her skin like she’s an instrument, and she wants to feel every part of the goodness of this moment, hangover and all, and let it swallow her up.

“Rey,” he says, his voice low and hoarse. “Let me make you feel better.”

Rey’s back arches against him, so relieved that he feels it too that her desire swamps the grief.

“Stitches?” she says breathily.

“You did a decent job,” he murmurs, running his hand down her waist. “But I can always re-do them after.”

“After what?” she whispers.

“Depends,” he murmurs.

“On?”

“On you.”

And she wants him. She does want him. Between his fingers and the water and the memory of his hands inside her that night in her apartment, the wanting feels like a physical object in her chest, heavy and tugging her thoughts free from the cage of her mind.

But equally, she feels the fear of a hundred bad choices resting on her sopping wet shoulders. Would fucking him in a shower be a good idea? Some small voice in her mind is screaming that, yeah, it would be a great idea. The other part of her brain points out that she has no business being here, that last night should be a clear warning that she’s not out yet, not by a long shot, which means that personal relationships have to take a back seat.

She could get Kylo Ren killed.

But his hands brush lower and the thought is suddenly totally absurd, because how could anyone ever kill him? He’s invincible. Even being near him makes Rey feel untouchable, like she’s brand new and sparking with a kind of passionate, pissed-off energy.

“Rey,” he growls. “Words.”

She wants to feel good. She wants him to touch her. But more than that, she wants to make him feel so good that it makes him forget the way she must have looked the night before. It feels like if she could make him feel good enough, it might undo it somehow. Might make him remember her differently when this all goes to shit.

“Yes,” she breathes, the water scorching her skin as his touch moves even lower, caressing her through the soaking wet fabric of her nearly ruined dress. He presses himself against her, hard and unyielding as ever. There’s an ache in her chest, a longing for something that fills her whole body.

His hand reaches around to cup her breast and Rey shivers against him, feeling her legs go a little weak as he runs his hands across the buds and sends a thrill of pure feeling through her. He nips gently at her neck as Rey rolls her hips against the swell of his erection. The groan he lets out is all male, single-minded need.

It makes Rey feel good to think that she did this to him. With her body and maybe even with other things about her. She leans her head back and reaches a hand around to feel the hard length of him. When her hand makes contact he jerks against her, hissing through his teeth and pressing her forward even harder against the hand she is bracing against the wall. His hand sweeps down to cup her through the dress as his other hand pushes down the thin strap holding the top up and tugs it down, gentle around her stiches and her bruises.

Rey reaches clumsily behind herself for him, tugging at the material of his pants to reach underneath. His skin is soft but his cock is hard in her hand, and she gives him an experimental pump that has him grunting into her neck as his touch on her slows. Rey grins to herself, glancing up to see that his eyes are closed as she moves her hand.

“Harder,” he grunts, and Rey increases the force she has on him, gripping him tighter than she ever would have dared. But he repeats the order a few more times until she’s got what feels like an iron grip on him, her hand moving fluidly as she finds a rhythm. It’s a little stiff, working him backwards and underneath his pants, so she makes a decision.

Turning around, she sinks to her knees in front of him, looking up and praying to god he’s not going to look at her like she’s crazy for just whirling around and whacking his thighs with her wet hair. But the look on his face is a kind of leashed energy, naked and lustful as she looks up at him.

Still a little nervous, she rests her hand on the waistband of his pants, pushing the hair from her eyes with her other hand.

“Can I?” Rey says, wishing desperately that she were sophisticated enough to know how to complete the sentence with something other than a bitten lip.

His hands tangle in her hair as he lets out a molten, “Fuck yes.”

Rey pulls his pants down and he kicks them off, his eyes never leaving hers. Rey’s never actually given someone a blowjob before. Her sexual experience has been limited to a few teenage fumblings around in the dark and one tryst with a card shark a few years older than she was one summer when she’d had nothing better to do. It had always been pleasant, but doing this for him feels good. Way good. It’s intimate.

He knows almost the whole story about her life but doesn’t come from the tainted part of her. He’s clean but dangerous. And when she puts her mouth on him, it feels like a natural and unexpected extension of her feelings for him to wrap her lips around him. She’s not good at showing gratitude, affection, trust. But this feels a bit like that.

He draws in a sharp breath as Rey starts to move. He tastes salty and for a few seconds it’s weird, but she finds a rhythm as her brain accepts that she’s not, in fact, about to be choked alive. She tries to go deep, but the bruises around her throat protest painfully and she leans back on her heels, coughing and embarrassed. She looks up at him, expecting him to have a grossed out look on his face, but there’s just a kind of liquid expression that she can’t interpret.

“Sorry,” Rey says, pointing to her throat. “Hurts.”

He inhales and a look of total regret flashes across his face.

“Christ, what is wrong with me?” he growls.

Rey feels a sting of rejection for an instant, but then he’s kneeling down next to her, taking her face in his hands and stroking it. It feels tender. Sweet. “Your throat. Your fucking _knees_. Rey, I should be blowing you.”

It’s such a vulgar sentence said in such a tender voice that the contrast makes Rey start to laugh. He frowns as Rey clamps a hand over her mouth, trying to stifle the giggle. “Sorry,” she blurts, “It’s just this is so...”

He arches a brow, naked and glorious. “Good point. Take off your dress.”

That shuts her up, and she shakes her head. “No way. Not while you look like…” she gestures vaguely at the broad shoulders, the muscles, the erection jutting out from him like a god damn throwing spear. “And anyway, it’s my turn.”

She straightens up, her eyes locked on his. Crouched next to her like this, he really does look like some kind of roman statue of a muscled god. Maybe Vulcan, minus the disfigurement. Pressing her hands against his shoulders, she pushes him backwards and down so he’s sitting on the floor of the shower, his expression doubtful.

“Rey,” he says warningly.

She climbs toward him, crawling between his legs so that she’s straddling him. His length is hot and right next to her.

He reaches for her dress to pull it off, but god damn it, she wants to give him a blowjob, and he’s not going to distract her. She ducks her head down and abruptly takes him in her mouth again, and he makes a noise that is part surprise part grunt of pleasure.

So she can’t deep throat him, but she can try some shit, right? Ren certainly seems comfortable telling her what he likes. She tries different maneuvers with her tongue.

His voice is satisfyingly strained as he holds her by the base of her neck.

“Rey,” he growls.

She looks up at him, his dick still in her mouth, and slurs, “Want me to stop?”

The look on his face is almost pained. “Jesus. You look so hot right now.”

Rey grins around his length, feeling wanton and ridiculous and _happy_. She starts to move and he leans his head back with a groan, and she knows she has him.

“Use your hand, too,” he moans, his hand tightening on her neck.

Rey grunts affirmatively, gripping him hard like before and working the two in tandem until she figures out how to hold him and move her head at the same time. It takes more concentration than she’d thought, but she gets a rhythm going. The hand stops her from accidentally taking him too deep, and her throat doesn’t protest.

“So good,” he rasps.

Rey hums her pleasure and his hand on her neck twitches. They move like this for a while, long enough that Rey’s jaw starts to pleasantly ache and the steam of the water running down her back makes her hair curl. He lets out little grunts of pleasure, his toes twitching sometimes against her as she tries a different position. Then she feels him kind of tense up, his hand tugging her hair hard.

“Rey stop,” he grunts.

She looks up, letting him free of her mouth with a wet popping sound. His eyes are hooded.

“You don’t want me to?” Rey says, feeling so frustrated she could scream, because she’s good at this, god damn it.

He makes a pained noise. “It’s not that.”

“Let me _do_ this,” Rey says, and it’s so unfair because she’s the one blowing him, and why does she have to beg to finish the damn thing? Why does she _want_ to beg? “Please.”

He lets out a drawn out, growling “fuck” and nods. Triumphant, she resumes her position as his hands find their place in her hair.

“Christ,” he grunts. “Rey-“

He grips her, and she understands without being told that he’s close. When he comes, she takes it in her mouth like she’s heard some girls do, and it’s not what she’s expecting. Salty, but kind of bitter, too. And more liquid. She notes these things clinically even as she’s mentally high fiving herself, because she gave a Kylo Ren an orgasm.

She lets him out of her mouth, him wincing at the over stimulation, and sits back on her heels to look at him where he’s still just leaning against the pristine rock of his shower.

“You're perfect,” he grunts. His eyes open and he grins at her. This huge man, leaning hard against the wall like he’s exhausted, gives her such a tender look that it makes her heart start to beat faster. Rey’s fingers are soggy and the dress is absolutely ruined, but he looks at her like she’s wanted and beautiful.

“C’mere,” he says, reaching for her hand. She climbs over his legs to curl herself against his naked body. He kisses her temple, wrapping her in his arms. “Thanks,” he murmurs into her hair.

Rey smiles at her hands as he just holds her for a while, stroking her back, mumbling soft endearments that don't entirely make sense. He reaches up behind them and reaches for the bottle of men’s shampoo on the ledge. Pushing her off him, he sets her between his legs and, still sitting on the warm tile, he lathers up some shampoo and runs it through her hair.

Rey leans into the touch, closing her eyes as his gentle scrubbing motions ease some of her headache. The sting as the shampoo runs across the scrapes on her arms barely even registers.

“Why wouldn’t you let me touch you?” he murmurs.

Rey chews the inside of her cheek, not really sure how to explain it. “It was your turn. After… you know, my apartment,” she murmurs.

She can hear the grin in his voice. “That was nothing.”

“It was a lot. For me,” she mutters. “And I’m not really ready to…”

His hands don’t slow. “Yeah, I’d probably feel the same way in your shoes. A lot is happening to you right now.”

The relief she feels at his obvious acceptance is ridiculous, because of course he wasn’t going to complain about it. He’s a decent guy.

“You don’t think I’m a tease or anything?” Rey mutters, closing her eyes. God, why does sex have to be so embarrassing?

Now his hands still. His voice is low. “No. Don’t ever think that.”

And she almost laughs, because he is _threatening_ her.

“Okay,” she murmurs. “Sorry, you know what I’m like.”

He snorts. “Yeah, Rey. I do.”

“Okay,” she says, exhaling. The water rinses the last of the shampoo from her hair. He gets to his feet and tugs her up with him. She turns around and looks up at him, and he gives her a wolfish smile and leans down to press a hot, greedy kiss against her mouth.

When they pull away, he looks down, his hand twining around her waist. “Next time, can I come on your tits?”

Rey laughs so hard that he has to kiss her to get her to go quiet.

X

Afterwards, Ren loans her one of his biggest sweaters, and the thing comes down to her knees. She decides it’s a sweater dress, and that she is never giving it back. He grins at her as she walks back into the bathroom, running a towel through his hair in naked, unabashed glory. He grins at her, and Rey wonders if he’s always this cheerful in the mornings, or if it was the blowjob that did the trick.

He pulls her into his arms and kisses her, and she decides she doesn’t fucking care. Gently, without breaking the kiss, he lifts her up by the small of her waist and puts her down on the counter to wrap his arms around her lower back.

Against her lips, he says, “Now let me bandage your fucking feet.”

X

She takes a little extra time to pull her hair together, even stealing a little of his moisturizer for her face as she scrubs the shadows of mascara off her undereye and cheekbones. The sweater is warm, and the gauze pads around the balls of her feet don’t lessen the pain, but they do make her feel a little better. She’s wearing a pair of his socks over them, feeling a bit ridiculous. But happy, aside from the headache. The ibuprofen has finally kicked in, so even that’s a little better.

When she finally makes her way downstairs, Finn is sitting at the island counter talking animatedly to Ren about something that he cuts off when he sees her. His brows furrowing, he get to his feet and crosses to her, tugging her into a hug.

“How are you holding up?” he says.

Rey’s eyes flit to Ren’s shit eating grin in the corner.

“Uh, good,” Rey says.

They pull apart. “Good. Okay, well I’m here to give you a ride home. And,” he says, turning around, he holds up a pair of beat up tennis shoes, “I brought you a pair of shoes to wear.”

Rey laughs at the sight. “I think your feet are bigger than mine.”

Finn is undaunted. “We can lace them up. You need closed toed shoes for the bike.”

Ren’s voice is flat, his smile gone. “No fucking way. She’s all beat up, last thing she needs is a ride through the desert. Get all kind of dirt and shit in her cuts. I’ll drive her.”

Finn points a finger at Ren. “I’ll borrow your car then. Unless you want me to ask Poe to swing by with his?”

Ren makes a disgruntled noise. “Fine. Take it fucking easy on the corners, big deal. Last thing we need is any more fucking chaos around here. If you crash, I will hunt you down.”

Finn rolls his eyes, but Rey feels something warm bloom in her chest at the concern in his voice. By all evidence, he shouldn’t give a fuck about her. But he does.

Finn claps his hands together in pleasure. “Excellent. Also,” he says, turning to her, “We’re stopping for burgers.”

Rey snorts a laugh. “Let me make you one at Scavenger. I’m opening today and I can make you something fresh. We can go straight there.”

It’s almost noon by now, after the lounging around and the arguing and the shower blowjobs.

Ren gives her an even look. “You’re working tonight?”

There’s a note of displeasure in his voice that doesn’t make any sense. She blinks at him.

“Yeah, of course. I have to work.”

He frowns. “You shouldn’t go back to that bar. Whoever tried to take you last night knows you work there.”

Rey refuses to analyze how he knows that. She flatly refuses, because even knowing that he wasn’t fooled by her cover last night has the fear curling low in her belly again. Apparently unconcerned that he’s just laid his cards on the table, Ren crosses his arms.

“I don’t want a different job,” Rey says. “And anyway, not like someone’s going to grab me from work.”

Ren arches a brow, because they both fucking know that’s not true. More truthfully, it’s unlikely that someone will grab her from work. Whoever tried last night was desperate, and Mountain Spring is remote enough from the city that it’s difficult to reach. And the bar is full of biker types who know and like her.

“Poe and I are coming up tonight,” Finn offers, breaking the silent standoff.

Ren gets an odd look in his eyes, kind of scowling. “Poe’s sucking up.”

Finn says, “It’ll be fine. We’ll keep an eye out. Not like you can have eyes on her all the time.”

Ren deadpans, “Can’t I?”

“Whatever, works,” Rey interjects. “I just have to head out soon. Finn, you ready to go?”

“I’ll go get the car,” Finn says, grinning . She’s not sure if it’s because he’s driving Ren’s car or that he got away with openly contradicting his boss, but he has a pronounced bounce in his step as he walks from the kitchen to the garage.

Alone, Rey turns back to Ren.

“So, see you around?” she says, trying for casual.

He arches a brow. “That’s what you’re gonna say to me?”

“What do you want to hear?” she counters.

He crosses his arms and walks across the room to her. “How about, _Kylo I’m going to the doctor and also will you eat me out later_?”

Rey strangles the shocked noise that builds behind her teeth, leaning forward and up to hiss, “Don’t say shit like that.”

He leans down and kiss her, tugging him hard against her with hands that press into her hips and hold her. She wraps her arms around him, lifting herself up to press a kiss right back.

Against her mouth, he mumbles, “I’ll see you soon.”

Breathless, she leans back and smiles up at him. “When?”

“How’s tonight work?”

“Bad idea,” Rey murmurs. “You attract too much attention.”

His voice is a low, deadly growl. “I am letting Finn drive you to work. That is my one and only concession for the day.”

She doesn't know how to feel about that. “Aren’t you, like, sick of me?”

His hands grip her ass and he looks down at her with an incongruously serious expression for a guy rubbing her butt in broad daylight.

“Feels like I could lose you at any second. Not gonna waste any time, I guess,” he murmurs.

Rey winces and he lets go of her ass, his expression softening as he apologizes. But he hadn’t physically hurt her. She’s just already dreading the day when this whole house of cards crashes down around her.

“I know what you mean,” she murmurs.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> (Sorry if there are any typos, I'm going to go through and do another proof tonight but I wanted to get this up.)
> 
> Shoutout to those of you who pointed out that I sent Rey to bed with open wounds. Please enjoy this apology bandaging. WHOOOOOOPS. 
> 
> I'm going to be traveling to Seoul South Korea tomorrow for New Year's, so I'm not 100% sure if I'll have a chapter up next week or not. I kind of think so, since I have like a 16 hour plane ride to scribble, but no promises there. If you have any recs of things to do in Seoul, do let me know!
> 
> Hang out with me on [my Tumblr.](https://violetwilson.tumblr.com/) if you want to! There's a mood board at the top if you're curious how I picture Ren's house and the Scavenger bar and etc and so on. 
> 
> Would love to hear your thoughts in the comments below.


	12. Symmetry

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm back from Korea! Trip was amazing, thanks for being understanding of my longer than average absence. 
> 
> This chapter is probably more typo-y than usual. I have been working so much on this chapter and I just want to POST THE DAMN THING.

**Ch. 12.**

**Symmetry**

_Rey_

The seven days that come next are so acutely _fine_ that it somehow makes Rey even more anxious. She’s expecting a retaliation, at least. The grabber should have snitched on her by now, and she’s never known Plutt to have excellent self-control.

So she spends the week waiting, and a pattern develops.

Rey goes to work, and most nights some combination of Ren, Poe, or Finn show up.

“We were just in the area,” Poe will say, winking at her.

“Oh I wanted to show you this video,” Finn will say, leaning halfway over the counter with a video of some llama or red panda.

Kylo Ren, though, just will only smile at her and make no excuses. No one tries anything with her at work anymore, and she’s got a hunch it has something to do with her three new bodyguards.

It makes her a little nervous to see them turning up so consistently, because shouldn’t they have lost interest by now? She’s not _that_ interesting. But they come back for every shift for an entire week, and she sneaks them free fries and tries to ignore the looming sense that this whole thing is going to come crashing down on her head any minute. Just like last time.

But then Poe will make a joke or Finn will say something encouraging or Ren will follow her into the back room and press a hot kiss on her mouth and she will forget the feeling, letting it drift down the river in her mind until it’s gone. 

She does her shift, fielding patrons and serving beers while exchanging snappy quips with a perpetually arch-browed Phasma. When she clocks out, she hangs with whichever of her friends are still around.

Once, she even goes for a ride around the scrubby mountain on the back of Ren’s motorcycle with the wind tearing through her hair. She grips him through his leather jacket, closing her eyes and trying to decide if this is the sort of thing she could _real-life actually_ have.

And every night, Rey walks home to her apartment in the dark, and he follows her, a black shadow at her side peppering her with questions about her day and dodging her questions about his. He’s unusually cagey about his work, even for him, and he mostly responds with vague gestures and shrugs. But she doesn’t push, and he doesn’t pressure her either when, inevitably, she arrives home and leaves him on her doorstep with just a shake of her head to answer the smoldering, wordless question in his eyes.

It’s not that she doesn’t want him to come in. She does. But when she looks up at his big brown eyes and he leans into kiss her, it’s all she can do not to burst into a flutter of panicked tears. It’s embarrassing, and it’s not getting any better as the week passes.

Maybe part of her is hoping to make him lose interest in her. Maybe she wants to see how patient he really is, underneath that thin self-control he imposes in all areas of his life. Or, maybe it’s just that she’s trying to make a plan, and it won’t work if there’s a Kylo Ren looking over her shoulder while she pulls together what meager evidence she has.

She flips through the case file that she stole, reading the details on it again and again. It’s just a brief, so the details are scarce, but she pours over it anyway, wondering what will happen to her when Ren’s investigation into her life comes to its inevitable conclusion. And what she keeps coming back to during this week of waiting is that Plutt will rat her out to save her own skin, and she desperately needs info on him to stop that from happening.

She’s not an idiot; she doesn’t have a hope in hell of taking him on in a court case, but she hopes that if he comes here to get her, she can scare him off with her motley collection of texts, receipts, first hand accounts, and contact lists. Maybe he’ll just go away.

But every night, her phone will ring and she will resolutely not answer it, her hands shaking at her side as she stares at the plastic burner phone vibrating slowly across her kitchen counter.

But sometimes it’s Ren who calls her, or she will call him, and when they hang up he will always, always say that he will see her soon. And she recognizes it for what it is: a promise. Almost a threat, sometimes, when she has been flirting with him. And it feels so sweet that it’s almost painful, because to lose him at this point would be worse than anything physical Plutt could do to her.

And that’s so damn frightening that she wakes up twice that week in a cold sweat, caught in a dream where he is standing in the burnt ruins of the old palace gaming hall, looking at a body-shaped outline in the rubble and then straight at her, his mouth set in that straight, unyielding line she knows so well.

“How could you?” he asks her.

She wakes with her heart beating hard in her ears, knowing that she has no answer for him.

The second time she dreams this dream, Rey sits up in her bed and runs her hand across her forehead, shaking with dehydration and anxiety as the first shudders of a panic attack rock her body. She waits it out, breathing in breaths that do not want to come with her back against the cool wall of her apartment. It takes almost ten minutes until she feels like her skin isn’t too tight and her brain isn’t too large for her feverish body, but when it does, she is drained and wired. She already knows that sleep is not going to come back.

So she kicks her covers off, flicks the bedside lamp on, and walks over to the makeshift workstation in the corner. She peers at the map of the United States on the wall as she sits cross legged on the floor and flips through Ren’s dossier again. She glances at her phone, sees the missed call from an unknown number waiting for her, and sets the damn thing face down on her kitchen table.

She can’t keep doing this.

Rey packs all her evidence up neatly in the file folder and shoves it in her hiding place in the back panel of the water heater in her hall closet. Then she waits for the sun to rise, catches the first bus into the city, and rides her old route to Plutt’s place.

She’s banking that no one in the right mind is going to be there this time of day and that Plutt is too cheap to have changed the locks when she went dark on him. There has to be more that she can get. 

“I can do this, I can do this,” she mutters to herself, no longer caring if it’s true or not. 

* * *

_Ren_.

Hux peers over the map on Ren’s office table, his mouth pressed into near oblivion by the sheer force of his displeasure.

“Like I’ve said,” he says crisply. “It’s a literal _ring_.”

“Can’t be that simple,” Poe cuts in, pointing at the radius surrounding Plutt’s center of operations in the north of the city. “Why such a short range of influence? We’ve tracked his movements as far North as Mountain Spring in the past.”

Tracked them straight to Rey, he means to say. But Poe's still on Ren's shit list for the Vegas thing, so he's smart not to bring her up.

Hux snorts. “You’re missing the larger picture. All the documented criminal activity falls within one police precinct, a fact you’d know if you’d read my briefing.”

“The briefing that was mysteriously lost?” Poe says, arching his full brow at Ren.

Unmoved, Ren flicks a grainy surveillance photo on top of the map. “So he’s our guy. Here’s his area. Corrupt cops.”

“That’s what that thug I beat the shit out of said,” Poe says mildly, opening the unmarked manila envelope filled with grainy Polaroids and a sheet of notebook paper filled with scribbled names and addresses. It had appeared at the office a few days ago, right on schedule. 

“Does that count as evidence?” Finn says, eyeing the folder skeptically.

Poe grins. “Does if your client hasn’t asked for court-grade documents.”

“We’ll verify it ourselves,” Ren interjects. “If he’s telling the truth, we’ll know.”

“What kind of name is Unkar Plutt, anyway?” Finn muses, squinting at a blurry photo of a bleary eyed man with pink skin. 

“Ugly fellow,” Hux sniffs.

“The names of the cops are useful,” Ren muses. “I’ll see what my dad makes of it.”

There’s a beat of silence as his colleagues learn for the first time that he and his father are back on speaking terms. Ren ignores the loaded silence. “I think we’re done here.”

Finn closes his laptop with a click. “Real quick, one thing. So, since the city of Las Vegas is in the pockets of some corrupt individuals, it makes me feel… ethically justified in bending a few rules.”

Ren frowns. “I didn’t ask you to do any bending.”

Finn stands up. “You didn’t have to.”

“Finn,” Ren says, warningly he hopes, because he’s seen enough young guys start out this way. Rules are easy enough to bend when you feel justified, but the law doesn’t care about motivation when it comes to shit like this.

“What did you find?” Hux says, always more interested in results than anything else.

Finn meets Poe’s gaze across the room.

“So, you know how CPS files are encrypted? Turns out, they're not very _well_ encrypted.”

The room explodes in noise.

“Finn,” Ren snarls, slamming his hands on the table. “You _didn’t_.”

Meanwhile Poe is laughing his rich throaty laugh, sputtering, “You cheeky bastard! C'mere!”

Only Hux keeps his voice at a normal speaking volume. “You’re all going to hell.”

X

He’s waiting for her in the parking lot out front when her shift gets out. First of all, he’s pissed. Finn’s on lockdown, his duties drastically restricted after he fucking worked his way inside a protected government system designed to protect the underage. That’s a bad habit to fall into, even _if_ his results had been really, really fucking useful.

Which is beside the point, Ren had been quick to point out. But not quite as quick as he’d been to read Finn’s stolen information on his not-quite girlfriend.

Rey’s birth parents are dead, for one thing. Which wasn’t a surprise, but it still fills in some gaps for him. And know at least he knows the name and identity of a number of her foster parents. She had a handful as a young kid, but around the age of ten somehow ended up living with an Unkar Plutt, the owner of a number of misdemeanor charges and a generally spotty record.

An Unkar Plutt who matches on of the aliases floating around for the fucker at the center of the crime ring. An Unkar Plutt who was a former underground boxing champ. An Unkar Plutt who is on Ren’s short list of people who no longer need to be alive.

Not that he’s going to kill him, per se. Just that he’s open to the idea.

Rey stands a little straighter when Rey emerges from Scavenger’s back door, one hand halfway through with letting her hair down from her ponytail and the other rummaging in her pocket for something. She sees Ren standing across from her and her face breaks into a slow smile. She stops just out of arm’s reach.

“Hey,” she murmurs, and he loves the pleasure he can hear buried in her single word, loves the way she’s looking at him like she was expecting him, how her cheeks have flushed a little.

“Hey yourself,” he says back.

At his feet, BB8 meows plaintively, rubbing against Ren’s ankles in a desperate bid for more of his diminishing supply of beef jerky. Rey’s smile cracks wide open. and she closes the distance between them to lean down at his feet, petting the cat with a big smile on her pretty face. She’s almost leaning against Ren’s ankles as she crouches, and he thinks she’s not that different from an alley-cat herself, in some ways.

Then Ren sees those faint pink burns on Rey’s forearms and his mood darkens. It is a comfort to him, all things fucking considered, that there are more ways he could make Unkar Plutt pay than there are ways the fucker could escape. But the counterpoint to that giddy sense of relief that he finally knows more or less the whole thing is the inevitable fallout that will come raining down on him once she finds out.

Rey is murmuring soft noises at the cat, trusting that Ren will watch her back while blissfully unaware that the secrets she’s been trying to keep from him are probably not secrets any more.

Rey looks up at him, beaming. “I thought maybe you weren’t coming tonight.”

Ren shakes his head, trying to muster up a convincing rogueish smile, but it’s slow to come. He feels… angry. On edge. This whole week he’s been waiting for something to happen and received only a kind of painful stasis. Yeah, the information he has changes the game, but he’s acting like nothing’s different. How the fuck is he going to break it to her that they’re going to deliver a damning report to that will likely result in Rey’s foster dad going to jail?

It's just... so fucked up.

Will she trust him again? Will she have faith that they’re going to protect her from the fallout? Will she, god help him, cooperate with them? And the fucking crux of it is that he doesn’t have a clue what she’ll do, and that scares the hell out of him.

She’s just as likely to bolt into the night and never come back as she is to feel any type of relief or peace.

Never mind that Finn’s straying into black hatting and the client might not even _want_ to prosecute for reasons that might be even more criminal. And she’s still just looking up at him, golden and happy in this shitty bar that's the site of some of his best memories. There are a thousand questions that linger in the air between them, and the distance is suddenly too much. He leans down and kisses her, running his hands against her face and ignoring BB8’s meowing.

Rey kisses him back, rising from her crouch without breaking contact as his hands caress the back of her neck, and she presses herself against him like maybe this week has been hard on her, too.

When they finally break apart, she is flushed and her lips are parted. She looks up at him like she feels it too, this thing between them that is way the hell more than he was planning on when he first talked to her alone out here. Back before all this started. His voice is choked, thick in his throat, and he knows he’s about to say something monumentally stupid, but it’s like he can’t stop it from coming out, he’s too guilty and scared that he is going to lose her.

“Rey,” he starts.

And stops. The door to the bar is opening, and he’s yanking her behind him like there’s an incoming threat. Rey yelps a protest as he pulls her around, but it’s only Phasma in the doorway, her brow furrowed. She meets his gaze.

“Trouble,” she says, her tone dark.

Ren nods. “Where?”

“Out front.”

“I’ll see to it,” Ren mutters, a mixture of shame and relief coursing through him. Trouble he can handle. Trouble is good.

Phasma disappears back into the bar as Rey squirms out of his grasp.

“Wait, wait, wait,” she says, a note of panic in her voice as he walks past her.

“Stay here,” he mutters, pretty sure he can’t fucking handle meeting her gaze right now. He needs to do something, make a decision.

“No,” Rey says, yanking on his arm. Hard. He remembers again that Rey is strong and wiry, like a little raccoon.  

“Yes,” he snaps, turning her around and pushing her toward the back door of the bar.

“Kylo, this isn’t going to be like in Vegas,” she hisses.

“Because you were handling that situation so well before we showed up,” Ren mutters.

He knows immediately it was a dumbshit thing to say, because Rey turns her fight up from a muted struggle to an all out thrash. She hits him in the chest hard enough that he loosens his grip on her shoulders and then _bolts_ away from him around the corner of the bar headed out front.

“Fuck,” Ren mutters to no one in particular as he sprints after her. The alley next to the bar is flanked by a concrete retaining wall on one side and the brick bar on the other, and it is cast in shadow so profound that Rey is a slip of shadow ahead of him.

It’s no good, Rey’s a much better runner than he is, and that thought might have struck him as funny if he wasn’t filled with a sense of choking dread. The shadows of the alley dart and jump in the light of a car’s headlights, and when he clears the side alley and emerges in the parking he can see Rey standing absolutely still in front of an idling black sedan.

That alone freaks him the fuck out, because Rey is always moving, always squirming or fidgeting or looking around. But it’s the car idling in the lot, revving its engine and pointing straight at her that has him shouting an incoherent word that is probably an expletive but who the fuck knows, because he’s _lunging_ for her.

The car starts to accelerate, and his brain is scrambling to identify the make in spite of his panic. The bright lights disarm his vision, but Rey stands her ground, facing the car with her shoulders set. He has one second to appreciate the sheer balls of her move before he gets to her, pulling her backwards and out of the way as the car rushes forward with the throaty roar of an engine that’s been idling for a long time.

The car brakes hard, missing the side of the alley by mere inches as Ren grips Rey by her waist and staggers them both away from the car.

The car backs up to go for her again, and Rey is screaming something, a ball of energy in his arms as he struggles to hold her back from launching herself at the car to beat it up with her fists, probably. It’s insanity, the whole thing is insanity.

“Go to hell,” Rey is screaming at the vehicle. Ren tightens his grip on her waist as her feet leave the ground in her anger. She’s like a god damn hellcat, arms flailing, almost incoherent in her anger. Meanwhile the car idles, just looming there in the shadows. Ren strains his eyes to see if he can make out a driver, but there’s nothing but darkness in the cockpit.

“Rey,” he says in her ear, low and quiet like he’s talking to a wild animal. Which, all things considered-

“I’ll kill him,” Rey seethes. “This is _my_ place. He knows that.”

He files that away for later, but keeps his hands firmly around her waist. “Rey, if you calm down, I can deal with this.”

She stills, craning her neck to look up at him. “The hell’s that mean?”

He gives her an even look despite how insane this situation is, because she knows what the fuck it means. She considers, and his heart is in his throat. But he doesn’t get to know what she would have said, because the car revs its engine again and he’s out of time. He reaches for his gun at his hip around Rey’s sudden barrage of elbows and knees. The car backs up into a row of motorcycles that topple over with a horrible noise of metal on metal.

Dimly, he wonders if the pissed-off bikers who come to this bar here might do his job for him.

But then Rey’s out of his arms, a bolt of tan sprinting towards the car as It turns around and peels out of the parking lot. The car’s tail lights glint at them as Rey sprints toward the car, and Ren’s sprinting right after her, because what the fuck is her plan here, exactly?

“Rey,” he yells, but he shouldn’t have even tried. The car is faster than both of them, clearing the parking lot with a squeal of rubber on gritty asphalt and then a gravel as it hits the side road. Then it’s on the smooth interstate pavement and turning hard to head back to the city.

Ren relaxes his hands at his side, forcing himself to take deep breaths. He can’t shoot at a moving car. There are people everywhere around here, he could hit someone. But it’s fucking tempting. His attention returns to Rey, who is standing at the edge of the parking lot and staring at the empty road as the sound of the engine reverberates into the darkness of the desert.

He walks up next to her, standing silent sentry to her lone wolf as they both just process the past five minutes.

“I didn’t even take anything,” she murmurs, and it’s like she hasn’t even seen him. “I couldn’t find _anything_.”

He’s not stupid enough to think she’s going to explain that one, so they just stand there in silence, looking at the moon as it bathes the stark mountain in bright white light. In the distance, the lines of light and color that make up Vegas glitter, a central artery of cars and trucks heading down into the brightest spot in the world for miles and miles around.

He wraps and arm around her shoulder until she softens, resting against him, shielded from the wind for a minute.

If she really were an animal, he’s sure she’d be howling.

X

They walk to her place, his arm still around her shoulder and his eyes roaming around the empty streets and the flickering overhead lights for any sign of danger. His instincts tell him that show with the car was probably the extent of it, just some bravado to intimidate her, but still. This group is fucking unhinged. It makes him uneasy.

And all the while they’re walking, he’s thinking about how he’s going to have to tell her. He just wants a little more time, just needs a minute. She’s silent, her jaw clenched and her hands working themselves from fists and to flat palms like she can’t decide if she’s going to slap or punch someone.

When they reach her apartment building, he knows right away that something’s wrong. There are skid marks in the parking lot, and that wouldn’t necessarily have tipped him off, but as they climb the steps to her front door the sense of self-preservation that has kept him alive his whole career is telling him to be careful.

He stops her as she pulls her keys out of her pockets, pressing a hand to his lips. Rey’s eyes widen, and maybe she’s tired or maybe she finally trusts him, because she nods without speaking and presses her keys into his open palm.

The new lock Poe has installed is unscratched and turns smoothly, perfectly oiled and made with strong, well manufactured parts. It’s a German lock, and he’s always liked it. The door swings open on their freshly oiled hinges. No one got in this way, but still.

When the door opens, he curses. Her apartment is destroyed. Her furniture is scattered across the room, all her cabinets are open and her dishes are in pieces on the floor. He can feel a slight breeze coming through the far window, letting in dim streetlight that makes the broken glass on the carpet sparkle.

“Rey don’t-” he says, hearing her push through the door and wishing he could spare her this.

Her cry is a strangled, half-formed thing and it wrenches through him. Her eyes are wide, glassy like marbles and just as clear as she looks at the wreckage of her home. He pulls her into his arms, wraps her up in him like he is trying to physically stop her from falling apart.

She grips his shirt for a moment, her eyes closed and her breathing coming in short little pants, but she doesn’t cry. Not yet. After a few seconds of this she lets go, and he knows that she has to see this for herself. She straightens herself to her full height and turns to face the destruction. He’d insist he do a sweep first, but her apartment is so small, there’s no fucking point.

Strangely, the first thing she does it to march to the narrow closet across the room, not sparing a second glance at her tattered duvet or the ripped up map in pieces on the ground. She walks across the glass like she doesn’t even see it, wrenching the closet open and reaching into it. She searches for something, and then he hears something metal catch and she lets out a sigh of relief. Her arm emerges with a file folder in one hand that she presses to her chest. She flips frantically through it and finally looks up at him with a look on her face that’s such a mix of despair and hope that it kind of makes him want to shoot something.

“I’ll kill him,” she murmurs, her voice deadly and low. “I will.”

Ren frowns. Really, of all the reactions he was expecting her to have to a night like tonight, he probably should have expected murderous rage. But still. He kneels in front of her, a decision clear in his mind.

“Sweetheart, we have to get out of here,” he murmurs, his eyes flicking to the broken window.

She grits her teeth. “I mean it.”

“I know you do.”

She is fierce, ferocious in yellow light through her open window. She’s so pale that she looks half dead except for the light in her eyes. Her grip on the folder is tight enough to dent the stiff paper.

He holds his hand out to her and she takes it, her grip unhesitating and hard as he lifts her up off the ground.

Ren surveys the damage. “Take what you want from here.”

“There’s nothing,” Rey says raggedly, her eyes on the shredded map. “Nothing.”

“Then we need to move,” he murmurs, already halfway to the door.

She’s right behind him. They’re back out in the parking lot in thirty seconds, her hand finding its way into his as they walk back to the bar where his bike is parked. He dials for Poe as the streetlights stretch their shadows behind them.

“What’s up, boss?” Poe says, still a little terse.

“You were right,” Ren mutters.

There’s a beat of silence. “Shit. Her place or at the bar?”

“Both.”

“Fuck,” Poe says. And it’s enough.

“We’re going to my place, can you meet us?”

At his side, Rey cuts in, “No.”

He looks at her, displeased and stressed the hell out.

“No,” she repeats, more firmly. “Just you.”

He groans, looks up at the sky full of stars, and turns back to the call.

“Scratch that. Debrief first thing in the AM,” he adds, looking at Rey pointedly until she smiles just a little, acknowledging the concession.

“Where are you taking her?” Poe says.

“Home.”

“Let me talk to her.”

Not particularly eager to encourage any more nonsense this evening, Ren growls, “Why?”

“Because she probably needs a friend,” Poe snaps right back. “And I don’t think your head is all that clear.”

A little shamed but mostly fucking pissed, Ren says, “Fine,” and hands the phone off to a startled Rey.

“Poe?” she says, hesitant. There’s silence as she listens to him, the sound of his boots and her soft sneakers on the concrete the only accompaniment to this grim walk back. Finally, she says, “Yeah. The whole thing.”

Another quick silence and then, fuck all, she _laughs_ , wiping her eyes of a tear and sniffling through a few little after-chuckles as whatever joke Poe made brings a little color back to her cheeks. “Yeah, you’re right,” she says.

Ren kicks a rock off the sidewalk and forgives Poe Dameron for everything.

X

They stand in the stark light of the Scavenger’s security lights, him checking his bike to make sure the fuckers didn’t do anything to it and her just standing with her arms wrapped around her folder. He checks his fuel line, finds it intact, and sits back to look at her.

“You’ll stay at my place,” he tells her, bracing himself for how she’s going to take this. Badly, if history is any indicator.

She purses her lips, sniffs once, and looks down at her feet. “I can’t.”

“What’s your plan, then?” Ren says, more sharply than he’d meant to, but damn it, this is not an argument he’s going to lose.

“I’ll stay with Finn,” she murmurs.

Ren grits his teeth. “How is that any different than staying with me?”

And she looks at him, really looks at him, and he can see the hunted expression there, the kind of wary, gun-shy caginess that he has always liked about her.

“Finn doesn’t _scare_ me,” she snaps.

And this, more than anything else that has happened tonight, makes him feel like he’s been punched in the stomach. He takes a minute to just feel the sting of it, to see the echo of the faces of a hundred men who’d had the misfortune to cross him at one point in his life. And he sees a similar expression on her face and he just…

-takes a deep breath.

Waits for her to take it back.

But she just stares at him, her brow furrowed and her mouth open like she wants to undo it, but she just doesn’t. A long few seconds pass, and it feels worse than anything else so far. She’s scared of him? Fuck, he’d been trying so hard, doing everything differently, and he’s still too much of an asshole, still too dark, still too angry to make it work.

And a petulant, selfish part of him wants to argue with her. But the remaining shreds of his dignity refuse to prove her right by debating her about her own feelings. So he clenches his jaw shut for a second, just waiting for this feeling to ride out.

When he does speak, he can’t help how bitter he sounds. “Alright. You want to call Finn or should I?”

It is the biggest lie he’s told her, even though it’s indirect. He’s not okay with this. He’s not fucking okay. He’s going to go home and lose his shit, because someone is trying to intimidate her, and she’s scared of him, too and-

“My phone is…” she says, and trails off, glancing back in the direction of her ruined apartment.

Oh. 

He reaches for his phone, thinking he’ll hand it to her and just leave it with her because it’s the least he can do. She takes a stumbling step forward, pressing her hand on his forearm before he can take it out and looking up at him with an expression that stops just short of desperate.

“It’s not you,” she blurts.

“Rey, I _never_ hurt you,” he says. Can’t help but say. It’s shitty, blaming her for her fear. It’s natural she would be afraid.

She winces, and, Jesus Christ, he hates himself.

She says, “I know. It’s me. It’s my fault- I’m-”

“Beautiful,” he groans, his voice catching because this is so fucking painful, to have to defend her from herself, to hear her put herself down even when he’s hurting, too. “So beautiful.”

“Don’t,” she snaps. “Don’t try and make it better, don’t try and convince me that it’s different than it is, because I know that it isn’t.”

And it doesn’t really make sense, but he knows what she means.

“I’m not being nice, Rey.”

"You’re _always_ being nice,” she says, almost yells, really, and it’s like she’s insulting him the way she says it, like she can’t believe him, like he’s got a lot of nerve. She turns her head away, glowering at his boots. “You’re always so fucking nice and it just… it’s not fair to you or to me for me to go around pretending like I’m something I’m not. And I’m _not._ And I’m so tired of being that girl who you have to…”

“To what?” he says, because she needs to say it. His racing heart quiets as he starts to put the pieces together.  

Her words are less a sentence, more an outpouring of feeling from a tap turned on full blast. “I’m tired of being the sort of girl you have to worry about, someone who needs help but can’t ever seem to get it right, okay? I’m not good. I’m not good at people. And it’s unfair of you to treat me like I’m something I’m not, when we both know I’m nobody.”

And if she were someone else he’d kiss her right now, make her feel what she can’t seem to logically accept. But she’s Rey, and he is so fucking in love with her it makes his head ache, so he doesn’t. _Long con._

“What do you want from me, then?” Ren murmurs, reaching for her hand instead, wanting to pull her into his arms. When he takes her palm in his, it’s limp. She still won’t look at him, and just like it did on that first day it _pisses_ him off.

“You could just leave me alone. It would be easier. Kinder,” she adds, in a muted voice.

“I told you,” Ren says. “I’m not a nice man.”

Her eyes flash to his, sparking and wild. A little manic. “You _are_ , you are so nice. You visit me at work and you don’t pressure me into doing stuff and you invite me to stay with you when-”

She cuts off and he can hear her struggling to master the tears. She swallows hard. “Look, it’s just you’re… misinterpreting me as someone who’s functional and fit to have something normal and good. And I thought I could make myself be good, not for _you_ but just… good, like, generally. But it’s not working, and I’m so tired of feeling bad all the time, and I want it to stop.”

She takes a deep breath. Her hand clenches around his fingers. “So you should just go,” she concludes, not moving her fingers, not stepping away, just staring at his boots with a grip like iron on his hand.  

He understands. Inhales. And the relief he feels that she’s not actually scared of him, she’s scared of herself and her feelings and her trauma, is so much easier to bear that he could probably burst into song if prompted. _Maria, Maria…_

“You done telling me how I’m supposed feel about you?” he says, lifting a hand to tilt her chin up, not at all convinced she’s not going to try and fucking bite him.

She frowns. “That’s not-”

“Look, you think you’re not good enough. I get that. I understand that feeling. But it’s not your business to tell me you’re not good enough for me _,_ ” he says. “Don’t put that fear on me. Don’t let it make you lie to yourself, Rey, because we both know we’re the same kind of person, deep down.”

Rey blinks at him, visibly startled. “You don’t understand.”

He leans forward, pressing his forehead against hers, whispering against her temple. “Look, maybe we’re not good. Fuck it, then. Who cares? You have to keep trying. And anyway I have _never_ rescued you even one time, and I know I haven’t because I constantly try, and it never fucking works.”

She laughs a shaky laugh. He can see the ghost of her eyelashes, dark and smoky, as they blink rapidly against her cheekbones.

“This doesn’t fix anything,” she whispers, her hand squeezing his again as his comes up and brushes against her cheek, her neck, the nape of her neck.

“So what? Let’s do this anyway,” he murmurs, drunk at the pleasure of touching her, of holding her. “Move in with me.”

“No fucking way,” she breathes.

“Fine,” he concedes, pressing a kiss against the column of her neck. “ _Stay_ with me while you find a new place. If you don’t like it, move in with Finn. No harm done.”

She inhales. Hesitates. “I can leave whenever I want,” she declares, her eyes closing as her head tips back.

He hesitates, pressing a gentle kiss at the edge of her face. “Probably.”

“You’re such a jerk,” she whispers, her hands fluttering up to grab his neck.

He kisses the edge of her mouth and says, “I know, I know.”

And he finally, finally kisses her. He kisses her soft, he kisses her as gentle as he fucking can. He tells her he loves her without saying a word, because the timing is wrong, because the timing is always shit when it comes to them. He doesn’t care.

He kisses her in the parking lot of Scavenger bar, witnessed by several drunk bikers and a small universe of stars that sparkle above them like a stream of light in the sky. Ren closes his eyes, seeing a river in his mind that lengthens and deepens until it is as wide and beautiful as a canyon. 

* * *

_Rey._

On the ride back to his house, Rey and her file folder are pressed against the strong expanse of Kylo Ren’s leather-clad back. It’s a comfort, really, to have everything she needs in her arms. She squeezes her eyes tight, almost praying to herself as the road rumbles beneath her, taking her to a new place, the next life, a new thing.

_I want to. I want to. I want to._  

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> HEY EXCITING THING, I have posted the first chapter and the mood board for my new story, which I am pretty sure I'll get around to posting here soon, [on my Tumblr!](https://violetwilson.tumblr.com/post/169564669452/au-ish-arranged-marriage-ish-star-wars/)  
> Shoutout to [ Plato,](http://archiveofourown.org/users/plato/) who let me a comment on it that made me feel 400% less stupid about it.
> 
> This chapter is dedicated to [uncleanakin.](http://archiveofourown.org/users/unclemoriarty/), who commented on the FIRST chapter that Ren's a secret musical nerd and I have been meaning to incorporate that [Maria Maria West Side Story joke](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VpdB6CN7jww/) ever since. 
> 
> If you're curious what I imagine the view from Scavenger is, I was looking at [this photo.](https://wheresmybackpack.files.wordpress.com/2013/01/vegas-desert-glow.jpg)
> 
> Thank you all so much for your reviews. They feed me.


	13. Cost of Living

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This one goes out to [mariaku21,](http://archiveofourown.org/users/mariaku21/)who went through and reviewed like, every chapter of this dang fic as she read through it. Mad kudos.

**Ch. 13.**

**Cost of Living**

_Ren_

It feels damn good to put thirty miles between Rey and Mountain Spring. As he pulls into his driveway, Rey clinging to him like she thinks he’s going to start levitating, he feels at ease for the first time in a few _days_. The gate slides shut behind them. There are no cars in the driveway. The garage door opens and he idles the bike into the space, letting it run for a second before killing the engine. He’s not ready for the silence yet.

Rey holds onto him, and he puts his hand over hers on his chest and squeezes slightly. Then he finally kills the engine.

She releases him and they get off, facing each other a few feet apart. She looks tired and wary, her hair a fucked up mess from the helmet.

“Welcome back,” he says. “Just us this time.”

Rey sniffs. “That’s good.”

He looks up at the garage ceiling, praying for divine wisdom. Patience. Patience and time and a whole lot of him not fucking up so that she stops thinking he’s going to yank some kind of rug out from underneath her.

“Want to order some food?” he murmurs. “I’m starving, and you couldn’t pay me to let you out of the house at this point.”

Rey snorts, and it’s an inelegant, friendly noise that feels like a tiny victory. Her hand is warm when he takes it in his.

X

He shows her the guest bedroom, and she sets her file folder down on the bed, looking a little lost and a little defiant. Which is more or less how she always looks, but tonight it’s closer, more urgent. In her tan jacket, she’s a freckle on the pale face of the stark white room. The space is lit only by one lamp, and the golden halo it sends into the room is like a tiny halo. Rey stands just at the edge of it, looking…freaked out.

He suddenly wishes he was the sort of guy who had blankets draped over things, or flowers, or something to make the room feel less like a fuckin’ hotel. Behind her, the dim outline of the mountains interrupts the sky above, jagged and harsh.

“It’s nice,” she murmurs.

“Beats Mountain Spring,” he mutters, because for all that the interior designer had done a good job, something about this room is wrong. How had he never noticed? Then, for the thousandth time, he feels like a gigantic asshole. Her place just got destroyed. She throws him a withering look and he has the grace to look a little embarrassed.

A little primly, she says, “Way too soon.”

“Right. Noted. I’m going to order us a pizza,” he says.

She unwraps her arms from around herself and peers up at him.

“You like pizza?’ he murmurs, which is a rhetorical question because everybody fucking likes pizza. But she doesn’t answer him with words, just nods her head. Squirmy, agitated Rey is speechless and still.

“Hey, c’mere,” he murmurs, wanting this feeling like his ribs are constricting to just _stop_. He pulls her into a hug, feeling her slim strength bend against his body. He brings his arms take up their position as bodyguards to her lungs, the way he’s seen her do.

The sound of her breathing is ragged, and out of nowhere he realizes that he’s rocking them back and forth. Rey’s hands fist against his jacket, and then he’s dead sure she’s _smelling_ him.

“You… smelling me?” he says, trying not to laugh.

“No,” she says, nimble fingers moving his jacket aside to bury her nose against the soft cotton of his t-shirt. She inhales deeply.

“Want to take a shower?” he hedges, grinning down at her.

“You fuck,” she laughs, tilting her head up to wrinkle her nose at him. It’s so fucking cute he almost misses what she says next.

“How do you do that?” she accuses.

Unsteady again, he blinks, trying to think of something clever to say.

“Do what?” he says, fucking walking right into it.

“Say the wrong thing in just the right way.”

Was that a compliment? It feels like a compliment. But he wouldn’t be Han Solo’s son if he didn’t know how to interpret a situation to his own advantage, so he smiles at her and brushes a strand of hair out of her face.

“Only works on you,” he mutters.

X

He gets a bottle of red wine in the kitchen, and as he walks back to the island to open it, he gestures at Rey to get herself something. He’d pour her something, but he wants her to get accustomed to opening a fridge and feeling entitled to take something from it. Rey looks pained even sitting on his furniture, and it dawns on him that she’s probably never lived in a house with… normal shit in it. At least, normal as he knows it.

Again, that weird sense that he’s not doing things right washes over him. Should he like, call his mom as ask her what to do? He’s never lived with someone else before. Definitely not a woman. Does she need, like… tampons? Is that on him, as her not-boyfriend? He can get tampons. He’s seen them at the store.

Rey pads to the fridge, pulls the door open, and pulls out a ginger ale. She hesitates there, blue in the light from the interior washing her with bright light, and she turns to look at him with a question on her lips.

“All yours, sweetheart,” he says.

She smiles, closes the fridge, and leans against the island with a soda as he pours himself a glass. The sound of her soda opening is an arctic crackle in the air.

Ren takes a sip of his wine and wishes he knew _anything_ about what he was drinking and how to talk about it. It’s… red wine, that’s for damn sure.

“Can I ask you something?” she says.

“Ask away,” he says, walking over to the living room so he can be questioned at his comfort. She trails behind, chewing her lip and holding her soda so tight that the metal dents a little under her fingers.

“Do you think people can change?” Rey murmurs. He leans against an armchair, not quite willing to actually sit in it while she’s still standing. He’s not ready to give up the idea that they may have to sprint off into the night at a moment’s notice.

Then he really thinks about her question, takes a long-ass drink, and scowls into the desert.

“Not really, no.”

She looks at her hands, sighing. She has a pretty sigh. Kind of soft and gentle in a way that Rey herself isn’t. Still at a loss, Ren tries to wrangle his thought into something less brutal.

“I guess I’d say that people are complicated. If they were bad, then they always had that potential for that type of bad inside them. But everyone has good in there too, kind of rattling around. People contain multitudes,” he murmurs, then stops, because where the _fuck_ did that last thought come from? He’s distracted for a moment, trying to remember where he’d heard that line.

Some ancient, pre-everything-that-is-now memory. A class, maybe? A book? He shakes his head.

Picking his thought back up where he’d dropped it, he mumbles, “I don’t know. I guess I don’t think it matters.”

Rey looks over at him a little slyly. “No, I guess you wouldn’t.”

“What’s that mean?” he says, not trusting the slight smile on her face at-fucking-all.

She scoffs. “No one ever stopped you from getting what you wanted.”

He leans forward, bringing himself just fractionally closer to her. The chair has a concrete base that keeps it solidly on the ground, but if it didn’t he’d be tilting it forward in it like he used to in high school when he got too big for the chairs.

“That’s not fucking true,” he says. “I used to get beat up all the time.”

She blinks at him. “No, you didn’t.”

He nods, and, oh god, he’s going to tell her about this shit. Fucking perfect.

“The first time someone beat me up, I was fourteen. He was bigger than me, and I was just this scrawny kid then. Gangly, you know?”

She smiles a little, sipping her drink. “No, I can’t really imagine that at all.”

“I’ll show you a picture sometime. I was funny looking and reckless. So, this kid was picking on me, right, and one day I finally got the courage to hit him back.”

“What happened?” she says.

Ren snorts a laugh. “He beat the shit out of me. But I had it coming. I started a fight I wasn’t prepared to finish.”

Rey’s silent, thoughtful. The hum of his house’s air conditioner kicks in.

Ren keeps his voice low and gentle, reaching to take her hand in his. He sets his wine glass down and traces his finger along her palm. Her lips part as he tells the rest of his stupid growing up story.

“But I got even with that kid. After a while. A different time. It was better, I think, because I had to wait for it. And yeah, I wish that kid had never beaten me up in the first place, but he did, and I couldn’t change that. So I got him back, and that was the end of it.”

“Anyone beat you up after that kid?” she says, gripping his hand.

“Yeah, like, all the time. I had shitty impulse control,” he says, laughing a little at the memory. So many stitches.

She quirks a brow. “You always seem so… in control. So steady.”

Ren arches a brow right back, because Rey has seen him royally lose his shit more than once.

“Okay, not, like, _always_.”

He shrugs. “It took me a while to learn to pick my battles when I always seemed to have so many fucking options. But you… you’ve only got one battle. Whatever happened, you’ve got this one big one to take on and that’s it.”

She looks at her feet and he tugs her a little closer to him by their clasped hands until she’s standing between his bent knees, looking down into his eyes. Her eyes flit from his mouth, to his eyes, to her hands, then back up. She’s almost shaking as he runs his hand up her arm, stroking the smooth skin of her shoulder, the velvety dip of her collar bone, the shadow at the hollow of her throat.

His words are quiet. Gentle. “Also, you’ve got some pretty violent friends.”

“Friends, huh?”

Ren reaches out and gently takes the half-empty can of ginger ale from her unresisting fingers, setting it on an end table without sparing it a glance. He won’t look away from her now. Ren’s heart twists in his chest as she looks at him, fucking into him, really, with those wide, skittish eyes. She looks as uncertain and as hopeful as he feels, and he is seized by this desire to finally close the distance between them. All the way.

Then the whole gravity of it all hits him. The enormous change, the casual violence, the fact that she’s in his house, with him, and the months of patience it took to get her to trust him like this. He should give her space, pull back, let her come to him.

But his impulse control is, and always has been, shitty.

His hand still holding hers, he pulls her gently down so her mouth hovers just above his. He waits for her to pull away, for her eyes to flash to a door or window, but she looks right at him. Only at him.

“Whatever you want,” he murmurs, and presses his mouth against hers. He kisses her just once, gentle and slow, for a few seconds, but it’s immediately not enough. It’s never fucking enough. He lets his hands twine in her hair, pulling her closer as she stands between his bent legs, and when her hand rises to rest on his bicep he flexes on impulse, every sense alight with the thrill of her touching him, kissing him.

She’s perfect. The kiss is perfect.

He pulls back and looks at her, half-elated half terrified that he has pushed her too far on a night that has been searing enough already. Rey stands upright, her hand balled into a fist at her side, and he has a moment of absolute panic at the look on her face. She looks…pissed? Incredibly focused?

Then she’s pressing forward, almost running into him as she kisses him. Unbalanced, he falls back into the chair, his hands wrapping around her lower back so that she comes down with him. They’re sprawled wrong-ways in the chair, his legs over one side and her knees pressing into the leather as he struggles to keep them both upright. Her mouth is hot and desperate against his, and she kisses him like a wild animal. _Like a raccoon_ , he thinks, dimly.

His hands slide up the back of her shirt to press themselves flat and greedy against the smooth skin of her back, the bumps of her spine, kissing her, requesting access to her mouth. Her hands run through his hair and she grips him firmly with her knees.

Rey straightens, perched above him as his back curves into the chair. She looks ten feet tall in that moment, her eyes molten. She’s the most beautiful thing he’s ever seen.

“Thank you, Kylo,” she says, low and serious. “That was a good story.”

He sits up a little, bewildered but _into_ it. “Anytime.”

“Thank you for letting me stay with you,” she says.

He will take everything she has to give him, and no more.

“You should know something,” he says, cradling the back of his head in his interlaced fingers. It’s an imitation of casualness that he doesn’t really feel.

“What?” Her voice is cagey, like she knows what’s coming.

“You’re not telling me the whole story,” he murmurs. “That car? That shit with your apartment? That’s not pissed off former boss behavior-”

“Don’t,” she says, and her voice is raw. This is what he’d been expecting. And afraid of.

Ren shakes his head. “I don’t want to lie to you.”

She starts to squirm against him and fuck if it doesn’t feel good. “But I want you to. Don’t…”

His hands find her waist and he holds onto her, centering her so if she squirms, she does it in exactly the right space. The friction is exactly right as Rey, raising an eyebrow, starts to gyrate. Slowly. Ren does not release his hold, pressing her down on him just right so- _fuck._

“Jesus,” he groans. “Rey.”

Rey’s voice is a kind of purr, something powerful and seductive and very new.

“Please don’t tell me you’ve developed a moral compass.”

Ren bites his lip as she leans forward to press her tits against his chest, bent over at the waist. Christ, she’s flexible. How had he never realized that she’s flexible? His hands find her ass of their own volition. It’s not that he wants to. He’s trying to have a serious conversation with her about real stuff, but it’s so hard to remember that when all his blood is going to his erection.

Is she fucking with him? He’s got a feeling that she’s fucking with him.

“Rey,” he growls. She reverses his rotation and god _damn_.

“Just forget about it,” she whispers, kissing him. It’s like something in the world rearranges itself, or maybe it just shifts. This is good. This is right. He should always be kissing her.

Ren sits up, his arms slipping around her shoulders so that when he swings his legs around to sit right-ways in the armchair, she comes with him.

“Kylo Ren if you pick me up-“ she starts to say, but he’s already standing up with her in his arms, and then Rey is screeching right in his ear. She’s apparently prepared to confront drug lords in a seedy parking lots but can’t handle being five and a half feet off the ground.

“Sorry, couldn’t hear you,” he half shouts, “Over the sound of your attempts on my virtue.”

She whacks him hard across the back as he carries her unceremoniously to the couch. He sets her down inelegantly and she sprawls back, leaning her head against a pillow as he crawls after her, laying himself on top of her. Pinning her down.

“Rey, listen to me,” he murmurs, pulling a piece of hair out of her face and leaning down to stare into her eyes.

“All ears,” she pants.

“I like you,” he states. “And it pisses you off, maybe, and that’s fine. But you can’t keep living like this. I can’t keep living like this.”

He pushes his length against her center and Rey tilts her head back on the pillow and moans. It is probably the hottest thing he’s ever seen. How in the high fuck is he going to live with this woman and not want to do this to her all the damn time?

The word slips out through gritted teeth. “I never asked you to take care of me.”

Ren takes the opportunity to kiss the column of her exposed neck, because he can’t answer that. He won’t answer that, not if he wants her to stay. And god does he want her to stay. He wants her to groan his name like that, wants her to sleep naked in his arms. He wants it more than almost anything in the damn world, even more than he wants to put his dick in her. Which is thing he wants second most in the world.

She reaches underneath him, trying to grab him through his pants or something, and he takes her wrist in his and lifts it back up, wanting to stay on the course. She’s trying to distract him and it’s working.

He gives up trying to form a coherent thought and just the words tumble out.

“Knock it off,” he mutters, though he’s obviously not annoyed. Not at her, anyway.

“Why?” she whines, arching and pretty underneath him.

“Because I don’t want to fuck you because you think that’s all you deserve,” he growls, simulating what he would do to her if there were fewer clothes between them. “I want to fuck you because I want to fuck you. For you.”

_Shit, he is so bad at endearments._

Rey looks torn between desire and panic.

“I can’t change, I can’t be your girlfriend,” she says, starting to babble even as she pulls herself closer to him, her hands twining around his neck and digging into his back like she’s trying to hurt him. Hell, she _is_ hurting him, and, he likes it.

He kisses her, hard, and her grip loosens and her whole body softens against him, warm and pliant as his tongue slips into her mouth.

A doorbell rings. His doorbell. The _audacity_.

Rey’s hands are in his hair as he presses her into the couch, aching for her.

Her mouth moves against his. “The door?”

He holds her by her neck. “Fuck that.”

It rings again. Ren wonders absently where he left his gun. She pulls away, pressing her free hand against his face to push him off. She’s smiling, the panic gone.

“Babe, _pizza_ ,” she murmurs.

The endearment floors him. Absolutely guts him.

“Be with me,” he says, unthinking, almost belligerent in his overwhelming need to just sort this out here and now.

Rey shimmies out from underneath him, bringing her knees up to her chest coyly as the doorbell rings a third time.

“Get the pizza, and I’ll consider it,” she murmurs. “Or _I_ could get it.”

He sits up, tugging his fucked up shirt so it sits right on his shoulders. He walks to the door and pays the guy. When he looks back at the couch, Rey is gone. He shuts the door in the gawking pizza guy’s face, almost running back into the living room just to check that she’s still fucking here, and that she hasn’t, in fact, stolen his motorcycle and blitzed off into the desert.

But she’s just sitting in the kitchen instead, shielded from view of the door and nursing her ginger ale.

“So,” he says, walking over to nuzzle her neck. “About this whole, you-being-with-me if I got you a pizza thing-”

“Depends on the type of pizza you ordered,” she says and smiles at him, holding out one hand expectantly for the box. Ready to receive. Something about the scene sends something in his chest roaring with pleasure. His scrappy little Rey, holding her hand out, waiting for him.

It feels almost as right as kissing her. If there is such a thing as equal, maybe it would feel like this.

He hands her the whole thing.

* * *

_Rey._

Rey likes pizza. It reminds her of birthdays, because that's what she always got on hers. A whole pizza. Plutt would have it delivered right to the old gaming palace, and Rey would watch the delivery guy drive up from her perch in the rafters above the front door, peeking through the slats on the old-timey façade. She’d be ten or something, feeling antsy and nervous and excited.

Plutt would drop the pizza box in her lap and say something like, “Best day of your life, kid.”

And she’d take it back to her little room and eat it slowly, in the dark, and make it last for three days.

That was when Rey learned about food and the power it has to make you feel better. It’s a lesson she’s still trying to un-learn, but tonight, at least, her demons are so close to her that she almost can’t see them.

So she eats her pizza and tells her inner monologue to just, like, chill out for five fucking minutes. And okay, maybe it only works because she’s so oversaturated that she doesn’t physically have the capacity to handle Yet Another Thing.

But.

“S’good,” she says.

He watches her eat, almost smirking as he leans over the counter.

Rey adds, “BB8 would love this.”

Ren blinks, and she knows it’s because he’d forgotten about her cat. To his credit, though, he says, “Will she be okay without you?”

Rey takes another bite and shrugs. “I’ll feed her when I go to work tomorrow.”

She likes that she always knows her mistakes immediately with him. There’s no subtle eye narrowing, no time biding, no grudge holding.

He’s instantly frowning, and he says, “Sorry, what did you just say?”

Rey dabs her mouth with a napkin, trying to look self-possessed.

“I said I’ll see her at work.”

“Rey,” he growls, crossing his arms, which is a cheap trick because he looks so good when he does it. “You can’t go back there. Not after all that bullshit.”

“Don’t fight me on this,” Rey grumbles, feeling the tide of his disapproval wash over her.

“We’re not going to fight about it because it’s not going to fucking happen.”

She crosses her arms right back. “You gonna try and get me to quit my job now?”

“The hell’s that mean? Someone’s trying to kill you, Rey. You can’t go there.”

She hates that he has a point, and even more, she hates that she even agrees with him. But it’s like the Scavenger Bar is her turf, her place, and it feels important that she not let this _one_ thing go. She has about two things that are hers all the way, and the bar is one of them.

Rey growls at him. “I’m unkillable.”

He looks up a the ceiling, muttering, “You are  _vulnerable_.” Rey bristles, but he’s talking again, his eyes snapping back to hers. “That’s your classification. You’re an at-risk person. No close family, no reliable transportation or communication, no education.”

And that… stings. Rey reaches for her pizza again, self-possession be damned, and bites into it like a wild animal. She can’t even really argue with him. He’s right. It’s infuriating. He could probably go on, but he doesn’t.

“I take it back. You’re not nice,” Rey mutters.

There’s a long pause. He takes a slice for himself.

“You can get a new job. We can find you something at the firm if you want.”

Rey bristles, itching for something to re-direct this shitty feeling onto.

“And what, kill people?”

He rolls his eyes, not taking the bait. “Jesus, Rey. It’s private security, not the mob. It’s all legal.”

“Not all of it,” she counters.

She can almost hear him count to three in his head.

“No, not all of it.”

And there’s a sour look on his face that confuses her. She tries a different tact, thinking of that fucking…stitches thing.

“It doesn’t bother me what you do, why should it bother you what I do?”

“Because your life isn’t just yours,” he says calmly.

“That’s not true,” she snaps. “That’s a weird thing to say.”

Ren shrugs, unmoved. “Call it what you want. But over my dead body are you going back there.”

He’s angry, she realizes. He’s really angry. She’d missed it, because he’s so still, so in control, but underneath his words he’s pissed. That probably would have scared her a lot more before tonight. Now she’s just… tired.

“I’m tired,” Rey tells him. “I’m going to bed.”

He nods. Slowly.

“Okay.”

“I’m sleeping in your guest room,” she adds.

He says nothing. She wishes he would.

X

She wouldn’t say she climbs the stairs in a full-on huff, but it’s something close to that. It’s only with a concerted effort of will that she doesn't slam the guest bathroom door. Trying for composure, she eases it gently shut like she’s trying to make friends with it. And then she’s alone.

Rey turns instinctively to the bathroom mirror, taking in her dark circles, her faded bruises, the sloppy bun half of her hair is falling out of. She looks at it all and wonders if she’s still the same person now that she’s agreed to stay with him, or if this is some kind of slow slide into depending on someone. Falling back on her heels, as Finn might say.

His mirror has no answers for her, so she splashes water on her face and runs a washcloth around her neck to scrub the grime off. She should probably shower, but the idea of undressing in this foreign space scares the shit out of her for reasons she refuses to analyze. Another time.

She pulls her hair loose and lets it fall around her shoulders. She should give herself a haircut one of these days. And get some new clothes. It’s like she’d forgotten how shabby she’s gotten lately, and being here has given her access to a whole new view of herself. It’s been so long since she felt like she could afford to care about these things.

Ren’s knock on the door makes her jump, but she doesn’t make a sound.

His voice, booming and rich, pushes past the glossy wood of the door.

“Hey, brought you some shit to wear to sleep. Nothing fancy. I’m setting it outside the door.”

“Okay,” she says. Then, some long dormant voice in her head prompts her to add, “Thank you.”

She’s still mad. But she’s trying, anyway. And he had bought her a pizza.

He grunts. “I’ll bring BB8 here if you’ll take care of him. I'm not good with cats, but...”

“I’d like that.” And then, just a few seconds too late, “Thank you.”

“It’s nothing,” he says, and she hears him pad back down the hallway. That’s what she likes about him. He knows when to leave her alone. Cautiously, she opens the door and peers down at the bundle of neatly folded laundry at the base of the door.

She pulls it into her arms and shuts the door to survey her prize. A cotton t-shirt long enough to cover her important parts, a towel, a toothbrush, and a pair of socks. Huh. His idea of the essentials is different than hers, but it’ll work.

She slips out of her dirty jeans and t-shirt and pulls his clean white shirt over her head. Her bra shows straight through it, but the fabric is soft and smells like him. Rey remembers the feel of his hands on her waist, so firm and yet so tender, as they’d stroked the outside of her thighs and gripped her ass. Something in her twists in pleasure.

She shouldn’t be here, she thinks. This is a bad idea, wanting him like this. She’d known he was a bad idea from the minute she’d met him and he’d coolly commanded the entire room from his silent post in the corner.

But his hands, those eyes, those kisses...

He’s lucky he’s so hot. His competence is infuriating.

X

Back in the bedroom, she feels her eight hundredth distinct emotion of the evening.

Without the buoying, irritating presence of Kylo Ren within ten feet of her, the whole situation suddenly seems much worse. The fear she’s kept at bay through sheer desperation had carried her as far as the kissing on his couch, and now, alone and without the gnawing presence of her hunger to distract her, she’s afraid again.

And she’s exhausted. She hadn’t been lying about that.

She falls face first on the bed, and her eyes close on impact as an explosion of white linens fluff around her face. Rey wonders, idly, if this is what snow looks like.

Then rolls over, because of course it isn’t.

The ceiling has exposed beams, the mesquite kind with curving, natural edges. They’re black like they’ve been treated with creosote. Or burnt into a crisp. Rey winces, running a hand absently along the faded burn across her torso. Great. Reliving that night is just what she needs right now.

She passes almost an hour like that, just staring up, her thoughts racing around in an endless stream of whats, whys, whens, and hows. She hears the distant sound of his shower turning on and thinks unbidden of the other day in his master bath. Touching him. Being touched. She buries her face in the pillow, her hands splaying at her sides in a desperate attempt to keep them from just reaching down underneath the soft shirt he’d given her and-

Her fingers brush against her file folder at the edge of the bed. Rey sits up as an idea hits her so hard it almost hurts. Kylo Ren takes long showers. She knows this about him.

She pads to the door and opens it even more quietly this time.

X                                                           

His study seems to simmer in the blue light of the night outside. It streams through a frosted glass wall, his computer stacks blinking cheerfully into the silence. She ignores the computer, knowing she doesn't have a hope in hell of cracking his password, let alone whatever kind of crazy fuckery Finn has undoubtedly set up on the inside of the system. 

Thinking of Finn makes her feel guilty, but not guilty enough to turn around. There could be something here that will help her. She pads around his enormous metal desk to the yellow legal pad that gleams in the low light.

Plutt constantly took his notes on yellow legal pads. It’s fitting that Ren should do the same.

The feeling of his leather desk chair against her bare legs is almost sensual, cold and seductive. Sitting in his chair, Rey surveys his office and imagines what it would feel like to be someone as powerful as Kylo Ren. As rich and strong. As terrifying. It’s a heady feeling, and when she picks up the legal pad it is with hands that do not tremble.

There are two words written at the top in an angular, messy scrawl.

_Unkar Plutt._

Rey drops the pad of paper like it has burned her and leaves quickly the way she came in.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I posted the first chapter of a fun, gothic fluff story that hit me out of freakin' nowhere. It's called [I'd like my obituary to hint at a sequel](http://archiveofourown.org/works/13382913/chapters/30652758) and it's about Rey moving into what she thinks is an abandoned mansion but it's NOOOT. It's really fun and I hope you read it if you want to. Moodboard [here, if you want a visual idea.](https://violetwilson.tumblr.com/post/169760660457/check-it-new-story-on-ao3-id-like-my-obituary)
> 
> Also, check out the artwork I commissioned of the chair scene by the bewilderingly talented panda-capuccino before I'd ever even posted this story!  
> [Source post here.](https://violetwilson.tumblr.com/post/166955764267/panda-capuccino-hey-guys-d-about-time-for)  
> 


	14. Taking

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> BUCKLE UP, KIDDOS. IT TOOK US 70,000 WORDS, BUT WE MADE IT.

**Ch. 14.**

**Taking.**

_Rey_

Rey dreams.

She’s running through the burning gaming hall, the air in her throat too hot and painful to swallow, but there’s _still_ not enough of it. It hurts to breathe, which wasn’t a feeling she ever thought she’d have. She can feel the black smoke stealing her focus along with all the air, making her dizzy and clumsy as she runs haphazardly through a building she knows like she knows her own body.

The edges of the hallway are lost to the darkness, and the kerosene in the old-fashioned wall sconces has shattered the glass reservoirs onto the floor.

 _She did this_.

She’d been so angry, she’d been holding a match, she’d seen that sconce hit the ground and just… just dropped the flame. Kerosene. The smell of kerosene. The sound of a tree splitting in half, a hideous crashing sound as something vital in the building goes up in a flash. Rey looks up as a dark shadow overhead falls, falls-

Rey wakes, stifling a scream. Her throat is on fire, she’s burning, she’s _burning_ , and- and-

Rey bites down on her lip and coughs on clean, cool air. She tugs her legs up to her chest, wrapping her arms around skinny, unburnt knees. She runs her hand up and down her body, just needing to check herself over for any hint of that searing pain. But it’s gone. She’s okay. Yeah. her apartment is shattered and someone’s trying to kill her, but she’s, you know, technically fine despite all that.

She forces herself to draw in a lungful of air, feeling the dizziness abate slightly. She clutches herself, her fingers strong and whole.

The room is a pale white in the moon, and in the distance the desert is a series of tan, black, and red smudges that fade into the jagged line of the mountains. Her heart rate is crashing in her chest.

Her gaze slips to the little plastic bag on the armchair in the corner. She’d packed it a few hours ago, gently stacking her clothes, her papers, and the sweater he’d given her. It’s all prepared, ready for her to sneak out tomorrow morning. She’ll catch a bus and… take it from there.

The bag is so small. She has so little.

At the time, high off the fear and exhaustion, it had felt like the right decision to leave. But after a little sleep, the idea of leaving like that feels more than insane. It feels impossible. She could leave, maybe, but could she actually stay gone? And the answer comes back to her, clear and strong in the way that night time revelations so often are: she can't go.

What’s the difference between can’t and won’t? She’s not sure anymore.

Is there such a thing as defeat crying? Fine, what the hell, she may as well try it out. She lets out three ragged sobs, hot tears leave trails down her face and onto her knees.

Even knowing that Ren knows the true name of her asshole foster dad, even knowing that she’s nearly out of time, she can’t go. If he knows Plutt’s name, what else does he know? Does he know that fire is her fault? Does he know she’s the reason those men died?

And if he knows, which he _must_ , why did he bring her here? Treat her so gently? Kiss her like that?

Once the tears slow down, she wipes her eyes with the back of her hand and lets out a deep breath. She’s out of room to feel sad. It’s like some ticking counter in the back of her head has been tallying the wins and losses, and sometime between last night and right now, it ran out of room for the loss part and reset it to zero. She feels strangely free, suddenly. Is this what crying does? She should cry more, she thinks. And maybe she’s a little hysterical or something, because the idea makes her laugh a little.

She could just stay and face him.

What had he said in the Scavenger parking lot? Something about… trying. She could try.

And then she’s crying a little again, and louder this time, because this anchored, staying feeling is scary and very new. It feels like missing him when he’s in the same house, it feels like choking on clean air… it feels like love. Not the way she thought it would feel, not really soft and gentle, but kind of painful and uneasy, like something unsettled in her chest that rattles around when she moves, making noise, reminding her of itself.

And it strikes her that if this is love, it’s damn inconvenient.

So she gets up and does something about it, because she’s trying, lately. And anyway, he hasn’t kicked her out yet, so maybe…

Her feet hit the floor and she walks to the door, sick of crying, sick of feeling sad, and resolutely does not think about the tattered map of her dreams on the floor of her ruined apartment.

She opens the door and doesn’t think about her foster dad’s laugh in her ears.

She walks down the hallway to Kylo Ren’s room and doesn’t think about all the burns that never faded. Forearms. Torso. Heart.

By the time her hand is on his door, she isn’t thinking about anything at all.

X

He sits up when she opens the door, his eyes bleary and his hair a mess around his shoulders. He blinks at her, eyes narrowed until she slips in and shuts the door behind her. He relaxes, his eyes turning soft and molten as he runs his gaze down the length of her body. He licks his lips, inhaling sharply. She’s woken him from sleep, but even as he struggles into wakefulness his eyes have that same roving, intelligent expression. 

A pulse ticks in his temple, and his gaze just keeps roving over her body. Rey glances down at the socks pulled up to her calves, the t-shirt that stops at her mid-thigh, and considers for the first time tonight what she must look like. The naked appreciation in his eyes is for her, and that feels like love, too.

Rey stands there, bathed in the moonlight from the skylight overhead, and sniffs loudly. His eyes snap to her face, scrutinizing her all over. His gaze on her body feels electric somehow, like a bunch of nerves on her skin had been asleep until exactly this moment, and she’s feeling the world with new and painful clarity.

It’s uncomfortable, she realizes, how much she wants him.

“Rey,” he says, in that low, smooth voice.

He looks wary, and it’s _so_ satisfying to take him off guard for once. He sits up a little, reaching for the lamp, and she doesn’t want him to turn it on. He can’t turn a light on, or this diaphanous fearless feeling might evaporate and leave her the same person she was ten minutes ago, sad and… just. Alone with herself.

She’s crossing the room and climbing onto his bed before he can ask her if she’s fine. She won’t lie to him, but she can avoid the question.

She crawls across the huge expanse of his bed, enjoying the startled look on his face as she reaches his side. He’s sitting up, his back against the headboard, and he reaches for her as she climbs onto him to sit right on his lap. They’re face to face.

“I need something,” she says, quiet and urgent.

“Name it.”

She wonders if he’s always this obliging at two am. His breaths are short and ghost across her collarbone as he looks up at her, eyes hungry. She reaches for his hand and, very slowly, draws it up to her breast, resting the tips of his fingers right over her heart.

“I want you to make me feel better,” she whispers, desperate to make something out of this feeling. Something better.

His intake of breath is satisfyingly shallow. Desire has replaced the sadness. If it’s all going to hell, she wants to experience the whole thing at least once before it blows up in her face. And she will have this with him. Assuming, of course, that he wants to.

Which-

“This a good idea?” he says, his eyes narrowed.

He has that scrutinizing look on his face, like he’s trying to read her mood and make a decision. A tactician, all the way down. But his hand wraps around her lower back, settling her on his hips so she sits perched atop an erection that seems to share none of his qualms. His hand on her breast starts to move, massaging and kneading and holding, sending a frisson of sensation down her spine.

She leans forward into that touch and catches his mouth with hers, kissing him.

“Don’t talk to me like that,” she murmurs. “I don’t want you to talk to me like that anymore.”

He grunts, his hand splaying against her back as his other one moves to her ass, clutching and releasing.

“Like what?” he says. As Rey moves her hips a little like he’d done to her on the couch, his words trail off into a hoarse whisper.

“Don’t be sweet,” she whispers, leaning her head down to press a kiss into his neck, her face brushing against the stiff stubble along his jaw. “Make me feel invincible.”

His grip tightens on her just fractionally, almost a spasm.

“I wanted to do this right,” he grits.

Rey draws in the smell of him in a long, greedy inhale.

“Later,” Rey murmurs, startling herself with her own vehemence. “Next time, or the time after that, but I need this. Right now.”

Rey slips her hand across his broad chest, dipping her hand lower. He hisses a breath as she brushes her hand all the way across, skimming a nipple and the hard muscles of his pectorals as she reaches down, lower. His grip on her hip turns bruising, and he tilts his head back as Rey’s hand reaches the top of the bulge there and splays her fingers across it. Touching. Wanting.

“Don’t treat me like I’m good,” Rey breathes.

He lets out a strangled noise. And _moves_.

One second she is sitting astride him, feeling powerful and wanton, and the next his hands are wrapped around her waist and he is lifting her off him and kind of tossing her on the bed so that she lands with an _oof_ on her back. He follows, rolling over so his hips pin her down, pressing her flat into the dense mattress as his hands hit the pillow next to her head.

He moves his hips, shuddering against her with a force that isn’t gentle, that is almost painful, that is exactly what she wants. He lets out a breath through his teeth, his eyes catching hers as he reaches one hand down to tug up the hem of her shirt, his thumbs dragging a hot line across her skin. He looks at her, drinking in her body, his shirt pushed up over her breasts.

And if he’d had it his way, she thinks he would have said something sweet here. He’d have turned on a lamp, or something. But she doesn’t want that, she wants him the way she wants him. She wants to fuck him because she wants to fuck him.

So she’s glad when he keeps moving, pressing hot kisses into her skin, his hands hunting and finding the sensitive parts of her. Then she maybe says his name, because he’s yanking his shirt off and she’s tugging her own off, too, almost choking on the need to be skin to skin. To just understand each other in this, the last language of the desperate.

And then he looms over her, just looking at the damaged skin of her torso, pressing himself into her, but still with that awful barrier between them.

She reaches up and wraps her hand around his neck to tug him down for a kiss that is as much a power struggle as an embrace. His teeth scrape, his hands grip, and Rey is throwing her hips up and against him, her hand reaching down to grasp him through his pants.

With a grunt, he pins her hand to the bed, his eyes finding hers again as he pauses the onslaught.

“Thing is,” he grunts, reaching a hand down to palm her sex through her underwear. She stifles a cry, because he is good. “You’re _not_ invincible.”

No, not good. Merciless.

Rey bucks against him as his thumb does that thing he did before on her clit. The circling. It worked then, and it works now. She bites a lip because she’s still kind of mad at him, at everything, and fuck does his hand feel good.

His voice is ragged and without pity. “You want me to make you unkillable? That’s not what I want. I want you to learn your fucking limits.”

“Fuck you,” she hisses, loving it, loving this. Loving-

He grips her wrist as she arches to get closer to that feeling, to that goodness.

“You feel invincible when I hold you down, sweetness?” he growls. “You feel powerful when you’re underneath me?”

Rey’s brain fizzes beneath her skull, her thoughts a carbonated explosion that’s equal parts angry and desperate. It’s not enough. She isn’t lost to it yet, she can still hear the roar of her thoughts in her head. She needs more, and harder, and him.

“Kylo,” she gasps as he fingers her over the fabric, raw and unflinching.

“No, you look at _me_ ,” he growls, throaty and low. She dips her head down, meeting the eyes that are searing into hers.

“You are breakable,” he says, ghosting his fingers across the skin of her sex, taunting her. “So breakable.”

“No,” she hisses, squirming underneath him, wanting him to just… do something. She knows that he knows what to do, and it pisses her off that he’s holding back. Then he fucking tears her underwear off and Rey thrashes, feeling the slight pinch of the cotton as it bunches between her thighs and comes loose, cool air brushing the hypersensitive skin.

His breath is hot and fans out right over her clit. Soft, so maddeningly soft. Cruel, cruel man.

“You want to be indestructible?” he growls, low and throaty. “You gotta make up your mind to fucking _live_.”

He inserts a finger into her and Rey _keens_. He moves it just right, and a kind of feeling starts at the end of her body and shoots up through the rest of it, and it's explosive, like a car backfiring in the night.

“I have to tell you something,” she blurts, arching.

He gives her a sardonic smile, his mouth right above her clit. He looks lazy and unconcerned, which makes it easier. She always liked surprising him. 

“Go for it,” he purrs.

Then he puts a second finger in and Rey’s thought transforms into a mumbled “ _Fuck_ ” that drags on for several seconds. No way out but through. Not good. Who _cares._

“I set my foster dad’s gambling hall on fire and two people died,” she moans, which isn’t how she meant to say it, but even as she’s talking her feels so good that it doesn’t hurt to tell him. Nothing can hurt her when she feels like this. This feeling, this stainless steel feeling is what she wanted. The fear is still metallic on her tongue, but it blends with everything else and she gives the hell up. 

His fingers go still inside her for a second, and she looks down, expecting to find him looking stunned or at least startled, but the look on his face is almost guilty.

“I know,” he murmurs.

Rey tries to sit up, but he presses on the flat of her stomach flattens her back down.

“Can I keep doing this or do you want me to stop?” he says, low and slow as his hand twitches inside her. Rey’s toes curl.

“You- you still want to?” she gasps.

“I never _don’t_ want to fuck you,” he deadpans.

And about a thousand questions flash in her mind’s eye. First among them, _how???_ But then his fingers give another twitch and his name comes free from her lips as her hands take their place in his hair.

“Good,” he murmurs, grinning, reverent. “So good, Rey.”

He knew the whole thing and he still wanted her here. She didn’t trick him, didn’t make him like her under false pretenses, he _knew_. And she’s a little pissed and a lot relieved, but mostly she’s ready to stop thinking about the secrets she thought she’d be bearing alone. Because he knows them anyway, and holy hell does she want to have sex with him.

He kisses her thighs, curling his fingers in her as she clenches her hands in his hair and just lets it go. Sets it aside.

“Please, please,” Rey whimpers, feeling silvery and desperate and good good _good_ as she melts into his bed. His dark hair brushes her thighs, his arms pressing her legs apart as he moves his mouth to where his thumb had been and _oh_ no she likes this so much.

He makes a _mmm_ sound into her, his finger still moving.

Against her sex, she feels his words. “You like bad men, Rey?”

If she were in her right mind and not half-drunk off desire and relief, she might tell him that she never wants to leave him again, that he’s a dead man for hiding the truth from her, that he makes her feel safe.

“Don’t tease,” she whines.

He laughs low and dark, an engine sound, a desert sound. He lifts himself up by his elbows as Rey yanks on his hair, beckoning, wanting him to crawl up to her and just-

His eyes when they find hers are low, heated like something cosmic has crawled into them and died. Her lips part as he wipes the back of his hand across his mouth, grinning at her like a predator. Her hands find the band of his pajamas and she tugs at them, clumsy and desperate as he hovers over her. There is too much space between them.

One hooked thumb from him and he’s gloriously naked above her. She can’t help it, she just reaches for his dick. He scoffs, batting her hand away.

“No,” he murmurs.

“Yes,” Rey snarls, so full of need she feels like she could drown in it.

He runs a hand over his dick, palming himself without looking away. He’s ten feet tall, he’s a god, he’s lining himself up with her entrance and she’s arching her back, trying to bring herself closer to him as he hesitates there on that edge. She won’t forgive him if he denies her this.

His voice is husky, urgent. “This is the first thing you ever really asked me for.”

Rey thinks about ginger ale, about _leave me alones_ , about the _just leave him and come with me._ He’s wrong. She’s asked him for a thousand tiny things, and he only ever truly gave her the ginger ale. The taste of it, that ginger taste, pops on her tongue and is all there is. The ginger and the truth and the desert and Kylo Ren staring into her eyes, knowing the whole thing, knowing her. Unafraid. Wanting her.

She says, “Please, _please_.”

There’s a pressure at the edge of her, then an expansion, and finally answering grip that comes from inside body. Rey feels these feelings as Kylo Ren comes down heavy on top of her, his arms bracing against her sides, his breath fanning on her neck.

It’s not like before. It’s not give and take, it’s not playful, it’s not aggressive.

This is something else.

Her breath catches. She expands as he enters her. He’s gripping the bed, going slow in her, and it feels like something has started to simmer gently in her body. She’s running on fumes.

And then he’s all the way inside her, and Rey’s fingers flutter against the mattress, her toes curling as every part of her contracts. She closes her eyes around the feeling, wants to hold it in her body for the rest of her life.

He’s just still in her, and the moment lasts for a few seconds, him breathing hard and her clenching everything, holding, keeping. Then, as before, as always, Ren moves and Rey is a young mountain cutting into the sky. A damn thrust fault subconducting into the mantle of the earth.

When he pulls out again it feels like the kind of good that is also pain, and she thinks he will thrust into her hard, like she asked, like she wanted. But his hand is stroking her cheek, running along her bottom lip as he rests his weight on his forearm, blocking out the moon, the room. He pushes back into her, slow, sweet.

“So good,” he murmurs. It’s like prayer, the way he says it.

Her breath catches, she wants to speak. What comes out is a half-formed whisper. The same one as always.

“Ren, please.”

She has no idea what she’s asking for, just that he has it. _Give me what I want._

His eyes close, his hips thrust, his breaths come short as he buries himself in her neck, in her body.

“You have no idea,” he gasps. “ _None_.”

He moves a little faster, his hands gripping, his chest pressing against hers. They drift like that, giving and taking through breaths that only come as gasps.

There was a time where all the continents were one body, connected in a continent that was one giant landmass. There's a name for that continent, but all she can think is that they're living there in that time before continental drift.

It feels like that for a long time, him in her, her holding him, clutching, striving, gasping. It’s slow, it’s achingly slow, and the rhythm he presses into her is an echo of the thought she holds back against a bitten tongue.

_Is this what it means to love someone?_

The fault between two plates can drive a mountain into the sky. It can create a deep rift into the earth. It can lift an entire continent out of the ocean.

But here, now, with him on top of her and her just rocking in the waves, the result of the convergence between their two bodies isn’t any of those.

It is an earthquake.

X

He doesn’t collapse on top of her like she thinks he might. He rolls right off, groaning. Then his hands are reaching for her, and they find her waist on the first try. She slides against him, settling into the weight of his arms, the bend of his stomach.

His mouth is at her neck, soft lips brushing the shell of her ear, blowing the hair out of his face as she pulls her feet flush with his calves. He kisses her neck, her throat, her cheek, her ear, and Rey is so stunned in the after glow that each one feels like the way a sparkler looks. Flaring. Bright.

She laughs, feeling every inch of his naked body against the skin of her back as he kisses and gentles and is so thoroughly un-Kylo that she wonders for a second if she’s in the best dream she’s ever had.

His voice is a slur. A sleepy, half-dead slur.

“My beautiful girl,” he murmurs, his hands coming to rest draped over her body.

There’s nothing between her now. His body is no secret, there is no place left for her to let him into. And she knows that nothing has changed, that she’s bound herself to something she could still break in half, but…

She looks at the white moons on her fingernails, the freckles on her once-burnt skin. She tries to imagine herself as someone’s beautiful anything, let alone _his_. And she wrinkles her nose, but the idea slides into place anyway, warm like breakfast. 

Something adjusts in her chest, expanding and spreading to make room for this thing. This newest crack in the world.

X

When she wakes up again, there’s daylight streaming through her window. A body is holding hers, and for a second she’s disoriented because _who_ -

But the smell of him, spiced and mechanical and good, filters into her consciousness, and she relaxes without quite waking up. Through the skylight, it’s just after dawn. If things had gone differently, she’d be waking up alone and sneaking out of his house to catch a bus right now.

Like he can sense her thoughts, he shifts, his arms drawing her just a little closer.

She smiles and closes her eyes again. She drifts.

X

The second time she wakes up, he’s sitting up in bed next to her, one arm draped around her shoulder as his other holds up a tablet. She's tucked against his thigh, her face resting on his lap. She’d been dreaming, oddly, about a campfire. A nice dream. The first one in a while.

“Hey,” he says, low and quiet. “Morning.”

She remembers the night before and promptly buries her face into the pillow. He snorts a laugh and tugs the blanket back, sending fresh air into her blanketed den of mixed feelings.

Into the pillow, she says, “I don’t want to talk about last night.”

It’s too raw. It’s too confusing. She’s too worked up, too tired, too happy to go there. Plus, for once she can afford to ignore it, which is a massive luxury.

There’s a beat of silence, and then he chuckles.

“Okay, fair enough,” he says, still laughing. His hand rubs her back, all gentle.

“Wait, just one thing though,” Rey says, lifting her head. “And this is the only thing I want to ask you about.”

He arches a brow, undaunted. “Okay.”

“Did you leave that legal pad out on your desk on purpose?”

His smile widens. “Sorry, but I _know_ you, babe-”

She reaches over her head for the other pillow on her side and whacks him with it.

“Ass,” she accuses. But honestly, she's a little taken aback by how not-angry she is.

He catches the pillow and tosses it harmlessly onto the floor.

“You want breakfast?” he says, unperturbed.

“What I _want_ is a boyfriend who’s not a con artist,” she harrumphs.

Then he’s yanking the covers off her body and exposing her naked back to the air. She squawks a protest but he’s leaning over, pressing kiss after kiss up the length of her back.

“Boyfriend?” he says, when he gets to her neck.

Rey colors, deeply embarrassed.

“Sorry, that- you don’t have to, I mean we’ve only known each other for-”

“No, no,” he says, smiling against her. “No, I’m your fucking boyfriend, alright? Have been for a while, actually.”

She tilts her head to look at him over the fortress of her arms.

She can’t think of a damn thing to say to that, because they both kind of know that he’s right.

Quietly, stifling a smile, she says, “Yes, I would like breakfast, please.”

He smacks her ass, and she’d be sitting up to smack his right back if she were ready for him to see the burn on her torso in broad daylight. But she’s not there yet, so she grabs a blanket and buries herself in it as he gets up. She only peeks once to see the smooth expanse of his butt as he strolls over to his closet and slowly, _slowly_ puts on a pair of pants.

“You need protein after last night,” he observes. “We’re having eggs.”

It’s eight in the morning, and Rey has a boyfriend who is making her eggs even though he knows she’s an arsonist who started a fire that killed two people. It shouldn’t work. But it does.

“Coffee?’ she croaks, because she can’t dwell on that boyfriend thing now. It makes her too happy. She’ll suffocate.

He prowls back over to the bed and leans down to kiss her, one hand lifting her head and the other braced against the mattress.

“Yes, dear,” he says.

X

Fifteen minutes later and Rey has assembled an outfit. He’d destroyed her only pair of panties, so she wears a pair of his boxes commando. It feels… luxurious, especially under the second sweater of his that she’s never going to return. What can she say? She’s a criminal.

She hears someone struggling with the front door and, curious, pads out of his bedroom to the walkway that overlooks the foyer. Bright morning light streams in through the two story space.

Ren saunters up, enters something into the keypad near the door, and unlocks it. Poe stumbles in, and Rey remembers belatedly that Ren had ordered him to meet at the house first thing in the morning. Had that really been last night? It feels like it’s been a decade.

“What’s wrong with your door?” she hears Poe say.

“I tightened security a bit last night,” Ren says offhandedly.

“Peanut?” Finn’s voice says. And Rey beams, because Finn is coming through the door and she’s flying down the stairs, happy, happy, happy, because she can probably keep him, too, assuming Plutt doesn’t manage to _actually_ off her.

He grips her in a bemused hug.

“Good morning,” he says, a little startled. She realizes she’s half dressed in men’s clothing, acting about 500% more perky than ever before, and gripping him way too hard. He puts her down, and she tries to act cool.

"Morning," she says, breathless..

“You’re… uh, living here now?” Finn says. 

Poe and Ren are standing in the foyer, Poe looking smug and Ren looking thoughtful. Expectant. She realizes that he’s waiting for her answer, too. 

“For now, yeah,” Rey says. It’s a cop-out answer, and Ren looks a little annoyed, but she’d been honest with him when she’d said she wanted to get her own place.

“At least until we get petty 21 under control,” Ren adds, somewhat pointedly.

“Uh huh,” Poe says, crossing his arms and looking skeptical as he takes in Rey’s freshly fucked up hair.

“Poe,” Ren growls, brow furrowed. "Don't be creepy."

Poe and Ren look at each other, and there’s a kind of moment that passes between them. Tense. Finn and Rey are the ones staring now, holding their breath.

Then, without a word, Ren shoves Poe’s arm and rolls his eyes. Poe cracks one of those Poe-smiles and punches his arm right back, and then Finn says something about _can they have breakfast,_ and Rey is honest-to-god okay all over again.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Look! Fluff! (*glances nervously at chapter count*) If you liked getting off the pain train for ten fucking seconds, I'm taking requests for a few nice happy scenes to scatter around in the Rey-getting-settled-at-Ren's house arc. Love to hear your faves! The more tropey the better. 
> 
> Also, my blog for Star Wars memes, the occasional story poll, moodboards, and extras, are [here!](https://violetwilson.tumblr.com/) If you have any requests or questions, my ask box is always open.
> 
> Finally, thank you to those who leave reviews! They're so encouraging, and y'all are so nice and SMART.


	15. Transitions

**Ch. 15.**

**Transitions.**

_Ren._

“So, Rey,” Poe says, setting his coffee cup down on the kitchen island. “What’s your plan?”

And Rey rubs her hands on the back of her neck and flits a quick glance at Ren. He stares right back. This is a question he _really_ wants to hear the answer to.

“So I agree it’s not a good idea for me to go back to the Scavenger,” Rey begins. Her eyes find Finn’s, and she steadies.

“Understatement,” Ren deadpans.

Rey ignores this. “But I think I’ll go insane if I sit around here.”

“What if you called it a vacation?” Finn says around a mouthful of French toast.

She smiles. “Sort of hard to relax when you’re on lockdown.”

“Not _lock_ down,” he starts to object.

Rey waves a hand in the air, effectively dismissing what they both know is more or less bullshit on his end.

“I called Phasma. Told her I needed a week or two off.”

And Ren’s counterpoint dies on his tongue, because when the fuck had she done that? She’d been right there in the living room all morning while they cooked, and her phone’s in pieces in her apartment. He reaches for his back pocket, feeling for his phone, and-

Rey is holding his cell phone sheepishly in one hand.

“Sorry, I got really good at picking pockets for arcade tokens,” she says. “And I needed to make a call.”

He whistles, reaching across to take the phone from her hand. She doesn’t resist.

“Damn,” Poe says. “That never works on him when I try it.”

Ren takes a sip of coffee.

“That’s because you’re better at talking than you are at swiping,” Ren says.

“What did Phasma say?” Finn presses.

“She was fine with it,” Rey demurs, looking down at her plate.

“That sounds like bullshit,” Ren says, handing her another piece of French toast.

Her voice is light. “She, ah, wasn’t thrilled about the hoard of angry bikers after, uh, last night.”

Oh.

“So are you fired, then?” Ren says, trying not to sound too hopeful.

She rolls her eyes. “No. She basically said I’m more trouble than I’m worth with all this chaos going on.”

And she waves her hand at all three of them, like they’re the problem.

“So you’re going to stay with me,” Ren confirms.

Rey stabs her toast. “Yeah.”

Ren pushes his plate away from him and straightens to his full height.

“Great, meeting concluded.”

Poe, never one to insist on more talking than is mandatory, says, “Awesome.”

“I can’t just… dawdle around here until something happens,” Rey protests.

“Why not?”

“Because I’ll go insane and start taking your motorcycles out for joyrides,” Rey says flatly.

And he makes a mental note to keep a close eye on the mileage on his bikes.

He grabs Finn’s plate, stacking it on his own clean one.

“You can get your GED,” he says.

And she blinks at him, frowning. “It’s not that simple.”

“It really is,” he counters. “You study, take the test, and get your diploma. They’re online courses, you can start whenever.”

“So just lay around and study for two weeks while you guys run around without me?” Rey says.

Finn elbows her. “You’ve wanted to get your GED. Now seems as good a time as any.”

Rey bites a lip.

“It just seems so weird to hide out while you guys do my dirty work for me,” she mumbles.

“Maybe she could do some recon work,” Poe suggests. “You know, undercover or something.”

Ren almost knocks the barstool over.

Rey brightens. “That’s a good idea. You could give me, like, a camera or a wire or something.”

But Finn and Poe are both watching Ren, their eyes fixed.

“I think the _fuck_ not,” he says.

Rey’s eyes narrow, and Christ, are they going to have a fight about this?

She leans forward in her chair. “I wouldn’t go when he was around, obviously. I could sneak in.” And then, a little defiant now, she adds, “I’ve done it before. Never had a problem.”

“Was that before or after he started trying to kill you?” he says, fists clenching, ears ringing, because what in the absolute fuck is she thinking?

Rey crosses her arms. Her tits pillow against the soft fabric of her t-shirt and he has to think rigid, unyielding thoughts to divert his attention back to the here and now.

“I don’t want to be sidelined in my own life.”

“And I want you to live to _have_ a life.”

Finn’s voice is steady. “Rey could help us organize some of the evidence. She’d know a bit more about the operation than we do. Wouldn’t kill us to get a second set of eyes on it.”

Rey looks and Finn, but Ren’s just staring at Rey, praying to every god he’s ever heard of that she accepts this compromise.

She taps a fingernail against the countertop.

“I could do that. I’ve got some of my own evidence that I could contribute,” she says, slowly. Ren thinks of that manila envelope she’d taken with her. And then, inevitably, the image of the shredded map she’d planned her escape route.

“Okay, so we agree on that front?” Poe says, eyes flitting between Rey and Ren like he thinks one or both of them is about to do something rash. He’s not sure when breakfast turned into a contract negotiation, but hell, maybe this is what it’s like to have a girlfriend.

Rey gives him one, terse nod and Ren feels something in his chest unhitch itself from his ribcage.

“So you’ll stay close to home, get your GED, and lay low,” he confirms, because he can’t risk a miscommunication here. It’s a dick move, but he can’t give Rey room to wiggle out of this. If she’s out for blood, running around the city with a switchblade in one hand, he’s not going to be able to fucking sleep.

“And actively help Finn with the report,” Rey adds.

He frowns. He’d forgotten that he hates compromising.

And he knows in his logical brain that having her assist on this project is a good idea. But if he’s honest, he wants Rey and this issue as far apart as he can get them. Something about having her here, kissing her neck, seeing her in his house has set something off in his brain. It’s like, before yesterday she’d been this loose, unpredictable agent, but now they’re a fucking _thing_ and it has bent his sense of chill out of shape. He wants to put her in a box, label it “safe,” and never let her out.

“Finn,” Ren grinds out, “is going to be very careful about that.”

Finn massages his temple. “For the last time, I’m only hacking responsibly from now on.”

Rey tilts her head to one side. “Finn, what did you do?”

And oh hell no, Rey’s not going to be hearing about that. Ren feels weird enough about it as is.

“Finn made a mistake he’s never going to repeat or discuss again,” Ren grumbles.

Smiling a little sheepishly, “Okay, _dad._ ”

And then something is plucking at Ren’s attention, a thought that insists on itself in the back of his brain. There’s something important he needs to be paying attention to. But then Rey turns her gaze back to him, and negotiations resume.

“Don’t hide things from me,” Rey says. “That’s a condition of my accepting.”

“Client confidentiality, sweetheart,” Ren says. “You can’t see everything.”

She bristles, probably because he’s being condescending as hell. But he can’t lose this one.

“Fine,” she snaps

“Great,” Poe says. “Meeting adjourned?”

“Or do you want to get it in writing, too?” Rey mutters.

Ren takes a deep breath. “Can you give us a minute alone?”

Finn straightens, visibly tensing. “Sure.”

Poe though, Poe is smiling. A weird smile. Like he knows something.

“Sure thing,” he says, and takes Finn by the arm and all but shoves him out of the kitchen. Over his shoulder, he calls, “Play nice, kids.”

Rey makes a face at their backs and then he and Rey are alone in the kitchen. She looks at her fingers, blinking hard.

“Look, I’m sorry,” Ren starts. The words come out thick and not quite as gentle as he meant them too, but he’s trying. “I’m not trying to control you.”

She still won’t look at him. “I know you’re not.”

And she sounds sincere. Sincere and tired. Which shouldn’t be surprising, because they were up most of the night, but it still kind of makes him want to break something. After all she’s been through, he’d wanted this to be someplace peaceful. Something good.

“I’m gonna get him, and then this can all be calm and you can do whatever the fuck you want. Swear to god.”

“I know,” she says, stronger this time.

And fuck it, her reserve is killing him. He walks around the kitchen island, closing the distance between them in three strides.

“Hey,” he murmurs. “What’s up?”

She blinks hard. He lifts a hand to her chin, tilts her face up to his. Her eyes are glassy and wet, but she’s not crying.

“It make me feel weak to wait around while you-”

“This is my job,” he says. And he makes it gentle this time.

“Quit interrupting me,” she says, scrunching her nose at him. And Christ, he’s so relieved to see her looking scrappy and annoyed instead of sad and tired that he pulls her into his arms again, kissing her as his hands go under her arms and lift her up so she’s sitting on the counter. She makes a noise of muffled surprise against his mouth, but her legs go around his waist and her hands tense against the back of his shirt.

And it feels just like it did last night. Important, and real, and the sensation of it obliterates about 70% of the bullshit flitting on the edges of his brain, and he feels calm again. Calm and right, and he should always be kissing her, always pressing her into a counter.

He pulls away, running a hand across her cheek, down the side of her arm, just touching her all over. He wants to touch every inch of her skin, make her let out those little breathy panting noises from last night again and again, wants to make her forget everything else.

“Let’s put your time here to good use,” he says.

And she smiles at him. And squeezes his damn butt.

“Can we work a repeat of last night into the negotiations?” And she laughs a little, soft and gentle.

And then the thought from before, the one just at the edge of his grip, slams full force into the front of his mind.

Last night.

They hadn’t used a condom.

Fuck.

He hadn’t asked her about birth control. Christ, what is he, sixteen? How is this _just_ occurring to him? It had all happened so fast, he had wanted it so fucking much that he hadn’t even considered that she might not be on the pill. He hadn’t fucking asked.

Her eyes flit to his face, and she tilts her head to one side in a wordless question.

“Sorry, was that…” and she trails off.

“No, of course not. I just,” he starts. And stops, because his brain is giving him _nothing_ to work with in the way of good ideas. He keeps thinking about what it had felt to be buried in her. Basic sex ed, and he’d failed.

His struggle must be showing on his face, because Rey reaches a hand out and presses it lightly against his arm. And just like that, he’s wanting her all over again. He is a fucking idiot who thinks with his dick, and this is exactly how his own parents ended up together.

Rey arches a brow at him. “You good?”

 _Best mistake of my damn life,_ his dad had said.

He remembers something Rey said once. Yelled, really.

_I know the statistics._

At the time he’d had no idea what she was talking about. But he gets it now. Kids who grow up around abuse are more likely to date abusers. Children born out of wedlock are more likely to have children out of wedlock. Something about cycles and systems whirls through his brain, and only Rey’s gentle hand on his bicep fastens him to the present.

“Kylo, you’re freaking me out,” she murmurs.

Just then Poe sticks his head around the corner, calling, “Yo, boss, meeting. Or are you two busy?”

Ren doesn’t even look at him. “Give me a fucking minute.”

“Jesus, fine, but remember that we eat on that counter-”

“Poe,” Rey snaps, turning to level a glare at Poe that Ren wishes he could see, because Poe’s eyes widen. Then he laughs, rolls his eyes, and walks back to the office, whistling what sounds suspiciously like the chorus from “Let’s Talk About Sex” by Salt N Pepa.

“Rey-” he says. Slowly. Very slowly. He cuts off before he can call her _baby_.

Her eyes go wide, so he doesn’t draw it out.

“Last night. We didn’t use a condom.”

He sees the exact moment his meaning drops on her.

“Oh, that,” she says, exhaling. “I’m on birth control.”

And his first reaction is relief. And then curiosity.

“How?”

Rey closes her eyes and tilts her head back. Her ears go pink and he realizes she’s _embarrassed_.

“I had, like, really bad periods. Phas helped me go to a clinic. I think so I would be less of a pain to work with once a month.”

He kisses the column of her throat. “I should have asked you. We need to communicate about this shit.”

“I know, I know,” she mumbles at his ceiling. He kisses up the column of her neck. “And don’t worry, I’d never, like, burden you with something like that.”

“With a kid?” he says, wary again, because does she not want kids? And anyway, are they really going to have this conversation right now, with her legs wrapped around his thighs on his kitchen counter? Apparently they are, because he says, “Do you not want kids?”

She squirms against him. “Yeah, I guess I do. I thought maybe when my life was better, when I, you know, got out of here.”

“When your life doesn’t revolve around an escape plan?”

Her hands dig into his back. “Hey.”

“Wasn’t a criticism, just an observation,” he mumbles, pressing a kiss into the top of her shoulder, refusing to think about how the relief coursing through his system is about her being on birth control and how she’s not anti-kid.

She bites her lip. “I thought maybe I could foster, too. I know courts are more hesitant with single parents but I thought if I had my own place one day, and honest work…”

Ah, fuck. The hope in her voice is the sweetest, saddest thing.

“That kicks ass,” he says, because he cannot think of anything else that does justice to the respect he has for her. “That’s a great fucking idea.”

She smiles. “You don’t think it’s nuts? I mean…”

“No, let’s- you’d be a great parent,” he says. And then stops, because he’s on dangerous fucking ground. There’s an image in his head of Rey holding a kid in her arms. They’re on a playground like the one he used to go to as a kid, and then she’s pushing the kid on a swing, and he’s there too-

Fuck fuck _fuck_. What the fuck is wrong with him?

Rey clears her throat as the silence stretches out.

“Also, I need to get some clothes.”

“Right, clothes, sure,” Kylo says, too loud and his words running together, because he’s so relieved she’s given him this out from the idiocy that was so close to tumbling from his mouth. The last thing he wants it to tell her that he’s imagining her having his fucking kid.

That image though, is stubborn. He’s never thought about shit like this, never had any real inclination toward settling down. Nothing this saccharine, anyway.

“After your meeting?” she says, and her voice is low and embarrassed, maybe. Who fucking knows with her?

He nods.

The front door opens and the sound of a pair of pristine dress shoes ricochets off the walls.

Rey moves to get down but Ren holds her still. Hux emerges in the kitchen and arches one eyebrow at the two of them. He’s got a Starbucks in one hand and Ren just holds his gaze. Daring him to say anything.

But Hux just sighs dramatically. “Well. I hope you’ll both be very _happy_.”

It’s amazing how well Hux does double speak. Ren’s about to make a snappy retort about how getting laid does wonders for irritability when Rey snorts and they both turn to look at her.

She’s obviously stifling a laugh when she says, “Does your coffee say ‘Hugs’ on it?”

Hux scowls at her, and then Ren’s laughing too, because in black sharpie on his coffee cup is “Hugs.”

“Guess they couldn’t spell Armitage _,_ ” Ren says, grinning.

“God, you’re both _children_ ,” Hux mutters, turning to walk out of the room.

They both wince, then make eye contact, then sort of laugh a little, because really, it’s like everything that could happen to them _has_ happened in the past 48 hours.

And he hates that he has to bring the conversation back around, but he does.

“I’ve got to go to this meeting. You good to chill out?”

“I can be left unattended for an hour. Don’t worry.”

He nods. “Right. Then we’ll go get you some clothes or whatever shit you want, and then…”

“And then we’ll figure it out?” she suggests. She sounds skeptical, but not hopeless. Which is enough to start with, he figures.

“Yeah, something like that.”

X

He takes her to Nordstrom, because that’s where his mom always went for clothes, but watching Rey’s eyes go wide and skeptical when they emerge in the air conditioned, sweet smelling foyer makes him wonder if this wasn’t a bad idea.

“Okay,” he says as they walk to the escalator. “What do you need, exactly?”

“Um, this isn’t really my price point, Kylo,” she murmurs.

He takes her hand. Mostly because he thinks she’s going to try and bolt for the door at any second, and he wants to be able to at least follow her out.

“I’m buying,” he says. His plan is to just play it so casual that she follows his lead on instinct.

“Um, no,” she says, immediately fucking that plan over.

“It’s no big,” he says. They reach the escalator and she comes to a dead stop at the base of it.

“Clothes here are expensive,” she says. “I can’t accept that kind of gift.”

“So pay me back sometime,” he says, shrugging. Lying.

“I’m not working, I can’t,” she says.

“So then don’t pay me back,” he says. “I’m good for it.”

Wrong call.

She straightens to her full height. “No way. Take me to a Target.”

“Sure, after this,” he says, tugging on her hand.

Eyes narrowed, she lets herself be tugged onto the escalator. And then they’re ascending, the bright sunlight streaming through the store’s central atrium hitting her face and making her freckles stand out.

“Why?”

He grins. “Don’t be mad.”

“I’ll be mad if I want to be mad,” she says.

“Just let me buy you some new underwear.”

She opens her mouth, points a finger at him, and narrows her eyes. “No.”

He’s ready for this one, at least.

“I ripped yours last night. I owe you a replacement set.”

They’re rising above the tiled floor, and he feels exposed, suddenly. He pulls her up a step so she’s standing between him and the wall.

“Not, like, fancy ones,” she says, and it’s almost a whine at this point. She’s still frowning.

“If I’m buying, then shouldn’t I get to pick? And it’s almost like I’m getting myself a present,” he argues.

They’re almost at the top. Her eyes narrow, and she bites a lip. He rubs his thumb across her palm.

“Please?” he says. He’s never been one for begging, but if lingerie is on the table, hell, he’ll do it.

The pleading tone in his voice is what does it, he thinks, because her skeptical expression cracks.

“Fine, but don't go crazy, right?”

“Got it,” he says, resolving that he’s going to go immediately over the top.

They step off the escalator, hand in hand, and walk together over toward the women’s section.

“And we go to Target after, so I can get myself some new pants. Which I’m buying,” she adds.

“If that’s what you want,” he concedes. He has time to buy her shit.

Twenty minutes later and he is feeling considerably better about his end of the deal, because he and Rey are standing in the underwear section, her arms full of bras in a satisfying range of colors.

Bras, it turns out, are damn expensive. But, as he flits through a rack and lifts up a lacy, red thing with, like, sheer panels for some reason, he figures it’s worth the price. After all, in terms of cost per wear, what would it break down to? If she wears it three times, it’s something like thirty bucks per viewing. Not that he’s trying to commodify her. Just that he’d pay _way_ more than that to see Rey in skimpy underwear.

Rey’s thoughts seem to mirror his. “How do they sleep at night, charging so much for lace and ribbon?”

“Because it’s worth it,” Ren says, grinning.

Rey rolls her eyes, flicking through a rack of light colored tan bras. They’re Rey colored, but very plain.

She sees his doubtful look, apparently, because she says, “I _need_ a plain one.”

“You do?” he says, pausing from his reflections on Rey…and ribbons. She holds up a totally plain nude one, no lace or anything, and adds it to her armful.

“Yeah. These are all dark and textured, they won’t sit well under my clothes.”

“So don’t wear clothes,” he says, because fucking _duh._

Rey ignores that. “I’m going to try these on.”

“Great idea, babe,” he says, grinning.

She laughs. “Wait here and try not to get into too much trouble.”

“Wait,” he says, catching her hand. She looks expectantly back. “How are you going to text me sexy photos when you don’t have a smart phone?”

Rey groans. “Dream on.”

Rey does a mental calculation. How long is it till Valentine’s Day? Is that too soon for a gift like that? Probably. So sexting will have to wait. That’s fine, he can be patient. She probably wouldn’t be into that anyway, but he can dream, right?

Rey’s walking away, and he grins after her, feeling pleased with himself. Rey’s trying on lingerie. Will the wonders never fucking cease? Then he realizes he’s just standing alone in a sea of bras and panties, grinning like a maniac.

He waits till he sees Rey disappear into the changing rooms before he walks out and over to the balcony overlooking the atrium.

He leans against a pillar overlooking the two-story atrium, watching tourists and locals come up and down on the escalators. His mind wanders away from the idea of Rey having his kid to work.

He’s going to have to scan through the reports and cut anything that might connect the client to Rey, which shouldn’t be too much of an issue unless the client is looking for her specifically. And they shouldn’t be, really. He’ll omit her from the known associates report and see what he can do about that fire incident.

That’s in the report almost certainly. He takes out his phone and dials Hux’s number.

“Well, if isn’t the supreme leader,” Hux snaps. “To what do I owe the pleasure?”

“Hey, Hux,” Ren says, because in his heart of hearts he kind of loves the stupid nickname. “I need a favor.”

“In my capacity as your paid subordinate, I’m contractually obligated to grant it.”

“Loving the attitude, as always. You know that fire?”

Ren can almost see the frown that crosses his colleague’s face.

“The one at the Palace Gaming Hall?”

“That’s the one.”

“Yes, obviously. It’s when the criminal operation went underground,” Hux says.

“Can you forward me the report pages on that event?”

Hux sighs, and he hears him typing something on his terrifyingly clean laptop.

“Fine, but don’t add anything. If I have to shorten another of your run-on sentences I’ll forget to order your mother’s flowers on her birthday,” Hux snaps.

“You’ve been sending her flowers?” Ren says, startled.

There’s a beat of silence. “You’re an awful son, you know that?”

Ren rolls his eyes. “How’s your _dad_ , Hugs?”

“Sod off,” Hux huffs. “I’ll send you the files. Though why you can’t just use your Dropbox like everyone else-”

“Thank you, your lordship. See you tomorrow,” Ren snaps. Then hangs up.

He leans against the railing, imagining Rey in an assortment of lacy bras, and then, inevitably, taking his damn time removing them.

Then his phone rings. Taking his phone out from his front pocket, he notes the number and answers immediately.

“Dad?”

They never talk on the phone. Ren doesn’t even have his father’s number saved as a contact anymore, though that’s for his safety more than anything. Same reason he’ll never wear a wedding ring, or keep family photos at his office. Christ, what if he and Rey have a _kid._ Would he have a photo of the kid in his wallet or something? Would their kid have dark hair and brown eyes? He’d like it if their kid had her eyes. And maybe her freckles.

“Hey, son,” Han says, yanking Ren out of his racing thoughts. “Just wanted to talk to you about something.”

“What’s up?” Ren says, trying to relax the whole-body muscle clench paralyzing his limbs.

“I’m retiring,” Han says in that gruff, direct way of his. “Thought you should know.”

Ren blinks, stunned. His dad’s been a detective with the LVPD for decades, staying on well past when he probably should have retired.

“Seriously?” Ren says.

“Yep. Only thing your mom’s asked for her birthday for the past three years, and you know, it’s coming up next month, so-”

“I remember mom’s birthday,” Ren snaps, way too defensively. This is obviously Hux’s fault.

“Right,” Han says, toneless and unruffled. “’Course you do. Anyway, wanted to make sure you knew.”

“Wait,” Ren says, thinking quickly, trying to remember strains of long lost conversations between him and his mother. “Are you guys finally going to move to, wherever the fuck, uh…”

“Sedona, yeah. That’s the plan. Not right away, but you know your mom knows everyone in that town, and she’s been talking to a real estate agent. Did you know midcentury modern homes are back in? Time’s a _wheel_ , kid.”

There isn’t enough air in his lungs, suddenly. He leans against the pillar, feeling… weird. Way weird.

“Well that’s, uh, great,” Ren says. “Happy for you guys.”

There’s the muffled voice of his mother on the other end. He imagines her in the kitchen, reading glasses on her nose, sipping from a coffee mug and reading a book on her gigantic iPhone.

Han says, “Oh, your mother says you need to bring your ‘special friend’ with you to her birthday dinner.”

“Girlfriend,” Ren corrects. It’s automatic, or he never would have subjected himself to his father’s endless teasing on the subject of his sex life, which begins immediately.

Han laughs. “You dog, you.”  
Ren rolls his eyes. “Yeah, look at me, philandering exclusively with one woman for the indefinite future.”

The future. What a _concept_. They could have a future.

“You’re a real lady killer.”

“Dad,” Ren groans.

“I’ll knock it off if you bring your girl. Wait, hang on.” Then, distantly, “ _No, he says they’re doing the, uh, boyfriend girlfriend thing_.” Closer to the phone, this time, Han says, “Your mother wants to know if she likes lamb roast.”

Ren pinches the bridge of his nose. “No idea.”

“ _He doesn’t know!_ \-- She says you should ask her.”

“I’ll do that,” Ren says. “Dad, I’ve got to run, okay?”

“Well, take it easy, kid.”

Ren hangs up, because easy is not how he feels. He needs to see Rey, needs to put his hands on her, run his fingers through her hair. He shoves his phone in his pocket and marches over to the changing room. There’s no attendant, which is good, because he straight up just walks in.

He walks up to the only closed door in the place and pulls it open.

Rey is standing there in jeans and a black lace bra, glowing in the bright light of like, seven thousand bulbs. Her skin is pale and golden, and he can see every freckle dotting across her body. And the huge fucking burn that cuts a diagonal of smooth pink skin across her stomach and ribcage.

Rey squeaks, one hand fluttering up to cover the burn. As if she could. He’d seen the suggestion of it in the dark last night, but he hadn’t expected it to look so…

She colors a little, and he knows it’s the burn, not being caught in her bra that she’s embarrassed about.

She mutters, “Sorry, I know it’s not-”

“You look badass,” Ren whispers. Rey in a bra and low slung jeans. Rey scarred like a damn action movie hero. She looks raw, lean and ragged and so fucking hot.

Her mouth opens and her eyebrows raise, then she takes his hand and yanks him into the changing room to shut the door.

But he doesn’t hear it because she’s yanking herself against him in a fierce, too-tight hug. He wraps his arms around her, yanks her up off the ground, and peppers the top of her head with kisses. She laughs, and he sets her down in the golden glow of the mirror lights to drop to his knees in front of her.

Her hands flutter in his hair as he presses a kiss against her burn, against her stomach. And okay, _fine,_ it wouldn’t be the worst thing to have a kid. Not the worst thing at all. Not if it was with her.

“Kylo?” she whispers when he doesn’t get up.

He kisses her again, right at the place her scar intersects with the bottom of her ribcage.

“You look like Laura Croft.”

She snorts a laugh. “Yeah?”

He kisses up her stomach. Plants one right between her tits. Then one right over her heart.

“I like the lace,” he mumbles into her smooth, clean skin. “I like you.”

She doesn’t say anything, but her fingers knot in his hair the way she seems to like doing, and they just stand there like that in silence for a second, hovering right on the edge of something.

He looks up at her, and her lips are parted and expectant.

He has to say something, or he’s going to say something else. Something he’s not ready to verbalize.

“Do you like lamb roast?” he says instead.

Rey tilts her head to the side. “Wait, like, sheep? Baby sheep?”

He snorts. “Yeah. Do you like it?”

“I don’t eat Easter animals,” Rey says flatly.

“It’s my mother’s favorite dish. Her birthday is next month. Go with me?”

She swallows. “You want me to meet your parents?”

“Yeah,” he murmurs, running his nose along her stomach. “I never asked you before because I thought you’d be scared shitless, but she really wants to meet you, and I think you’ll really like them. They’re…” he struggles to get the right word for his complicated, distracted parents. “They’re funny.”

She doesn’t say anything, and he’s scared shitless for a second, because is he moving too fast? He stands up again, ready for anything, but she’s just blinking at him. Topless and hot as hell and on the brink of tears.

“You told your parents about me?”

“Sorry, was that, uh, wrong? I just-”

She wraps his arms around him again, burying her face against his chest.

“Okay, but my table manners aren’t awesome.”

“That’s fine, neither are my dad’s.”

X         

It’s late when they get home. The sun is setting and he pulls his car into his garage with Rey talking to him animatedly about his mom.

“But what do I _get_ her? It’s her birthday,” she insists.

He kills the engine. “You don’t have to get her anything. You guys just met.”

“Right, but like, people _do_ presents on birthdays,” she insists. “That’s what people do.”

Something in her somewhat academic tone stops him.

“Did you get presents growing up?”

She bites a lip. He already knows. He can spare her the heartache, then.

He opens his car door mostly and sets one leg on the ground. “We’ll pick her up some flowers. They can be from both of us.”

“I’ll get her something,” Rey insists. She’s got a thoughtful expression on, and he wonders what she’s got planned. She opens her side and gets to her feet, stretching luxuriously. He beats her to the trunk and lifts out the bags of clothes and underwear they’d compromised on.

“Oh, I had something delivered to the house for you,” he says, casual.

She pauses halfway from tugging her Target bags from his hands. “What did you do?” she says.

He feigns hurt. “Nothing you won’t like. Push the button over there for the garage door.”

She does, watching him cagily. “I don’t like this.”

He locks the car and walks over to her as the door comes down, separating them from the cooling air. He drapes an arm around her shoulder and opens the door.

Predictably, BB8 is _right_ underfoot, meowing like a damn hellcat. He rockets into the garage, the collar around his neck jangling with the bell attached to it. How the hell Poe managed to catch him, Ren doesn’t know.

“Damn,” he mutters.

Rey has no such concerns. She sets her bags _carefully_ down on the step and then runs back into the garage, crouching down and holding out a hand beckoningly to where the orange cat is watching her from underneath his car.

Ren reaches into his jacket pocket and wordlessly hands Rey the last of his Slim Jims.

“Told you,” he says.

Rey beams up at him, ripping open the plastic and holding the food out to the tabby.

“Thank you, thank you,” she enthuses. Then turns her attention back to the cat. “It’s okay, baby. You’re gonna have a better life, you’re not going to be hungry anymore, and I’m going to get you a whole bunch of toys when I start working,” she vows.

And he just stands there, watching her make promises to a cat, betting on the future, and wonders if it’s possible that this is the new normal. If this could be the kind of moment they get to have again. It’s what he wants. He can only hope she’s there, too. Feeling the same thing.

BB8 creeps out from under his car. They stand there together, and they don’t go back inside until BB8 crawls into her arms and starts to purr.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I am hopelessly indebted to [AmyZini](http://archiveofourown.org/users/amyzini), who tirelessly beta'd this beast and gently saved me from myself about five hundred times. This chapter would have been Not Good without you. And also thank you to [LifeofSnark](http://archiveofourown.org/users/lifeofsnark), who came in at the 11th hour. ILUSM. (Go read her fics!) 
> 
> Also, my blog for Star Wars memes, the occasional story poll, moodboards, and extras, are [here!](https://violetwilson.tumblr.com/) If you have any requests or questions, my ask box is always open.
> 
> Reviews and thoughts really appreciated, if you have time to leave a note!


	16. About Time

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> SUGGESTED LISTENING [FOR MAXIMUM AMBIANCE.](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S-cbOl96RFM)

**Ch. 16.**

**About Time.**

_Rey_

It’s the third day she’s baked a cake, but this time it’s different because Kylo is here too, watching her intently as she beats icing against the side of the bowl. Her arms work and she’s squinting hard to see the little clumps of unincorporated powdered sugar. Last time she hadn’t done it quite well enough and the icing had turned out lumpy. Lumpy, she knows, is bad. Icing is supposed to be smooth and creamy.

“What did that bowl ever do to you?” Ren says, breaking her concentration.

“You have to get the lumps out,” Rey says, thinking of the ten thousand food blogs she’s been reading in preparation for making this cake. She’s still floored by how long it takes food blogs to actually get to the recipe, but she can’t deny that she’s getting better.

The first two attempts had come out just a little overcooked. Not quite scorched, but definitely burned. Which felt fitting, somehow. But this one, this third cake, is going to be the one she gets right. She has to get it right, because the birthday dinner is tonight and Kylo is watching her every move.

“And how long until the cake’s done?” Ren says.

Rey glances down at the timer. Two minutes and fifteen seconds.

“Soon.”

Rey’s sweater sleeve drags across the countertop, picking up a fine layer of dust. Powdered sugar, she’d been surprised to learn, looks a lot like cocaine. Only at least no one asks you to beat _cocaine_ into solution with water and vanilla.  

“Rey, baby, they _sell_ cakes.”

“It’s her birthday,” Rey says crisply, rolling her eyes. “She’s your mother.”

“She’s going to like you even if you don’t bring a cake.”

“I’m this random girl crashing at your house. What if they think I’m some kind of..”

Rey trails off, her whisking degenerating into a sort of furious grind as she presses the thin icing flat against the bowl with strong movements of her arms. It makes a metallic sliding noise that jangles around the kitchen.

“They won’t think anything of it. Hell, they moved in together within like a week of meeting. We’ve got months on them.”

“You only get one first impression,” Rey grunts.

“You didn’t like me when we first met,” he points out. “And we turned out okay.”

Rey looks up from the icing and meets his eyes. The night they met seems like a long time ago, and she’d hardly classify their situation as “okay,” but he has a point. And she feels a little better about it. Kylo always makes sense. She can put her back up against him and point a knife at the world, because whatever he says won’t fall through. She glances down at the timer. Just over a minute.

And then, with no preamble at all, he rolls his shoulder back and says, “We’re delivering the final report to the client on Thursday.”

The whisk makes a sharp, metallic clang as she drops it against the side of the bowl.

“That’s great,” Rey says. Her brain whirs, but all she can think about is the timer, about how there’s only about forty seconds yet until she finds out if she got this damn cake right.

He runs a hand along his jaw, his eyes watching her face. “So we’re thinking about a party on Friday. To celebrate wrapping this project and you taking your test.”

Rey swallows. A week from now, and the worst will be over. She almost can’t fathom it. Two weeks of hiding, of stressing, of late nights and anxiety, and it’s all over. _So soon_. The timer blinks out fifteen seconds.

His lets out a long breath and adds, “I’ve got a few loose ends to tie up, and anyway, we all need to blow off some fucking steam.”

“That sounds-”

The timer goes off. Rey flinches.

She silences the alarm, shoves her hand into her oven mitts, and crouches in front of the door. A blast of warm, dry air escapes, brushing her hair back and-

The cake is perfect.

Golden and soft, gently mounded like the rise of a hill, it’s exactly the right color, exactly what she wanted, _just_ like the pictures. And it only took ten or so hours of research, anxiety, and screw ups to get here. Rey feels deflated, suddenly, when she adds up how much damn time it took her to make this stupid cake, and she sort of wants to just throw the whole thing away.

But she reaches into the golden warmth of the oven anyway, trying not to think about what Unkar Plutt will say when he learns that she’s betrayed him. The idea fills her with a kind of cold, nameless dread that not even the heat from the oven can thaw. When she pulls the cake out, it takes her a few seconds to realize that she’s brushed the underside of her arm against the oven.  

The burn comes slow, more of a dull impression of pain at first. She sets the cake on the stove top and looks down at the soft underbelly of her arm as the pain starts to swell, sharp and small and loud in her head. She pulls the spot to her mouth and sucks at it, hiding the motion from Ren in front of her body.

No good, though. She hears him push the stool back as he stands up.

“Hey, it’s okay if it’s a little burnt, we can just put more icing on- oh,“ he says, reaching her side. He ignores the cake, which is dumb because it’s _perfect_ , and pulls her arm away from her mouth.

“I brushed it on the oven,” Rey says. “But the cake turned out. Look!”

He doesn’t look. He turns to the freezer and returns with an ice cube that he presses against the burn with a firm hand.

“You hurt yourself,” he says, low and throaty. She meets his eyes and there’s a quiet reproach in them.

“I know,” Rey mumbles.

The cold seeps into her skin and slowly replaces the burning sensation with a freezing one, which is better even though it hurts too. He lifts her hand up in his and presses her fingers against the ice. She holds it.

“Will you help me with the icing?” Rey says, conceding defeat.

He smiles. “I can finally beat something up for you.”

“Don’t let it go to your head,” Rey snorts.

He picks up the whisk. Grins. “Too late.”

He starts whisking as she cradles her burn and looks back at the cake.

“She’s going to think I can’t cook,” Rey blurts, because really, look at it. She’s had two weeks to get this right and it still looks like a kid made it.  

“You made a cake,” he points out. Like it’s that simple.

“Yeah, but it’s…”

His eyes flit to the carton of strawberries next to the fridge, and he stops whisking. “You’re gonna add strawberries?”

“You said she liked strawberries,” Rey says, feeling suddenly nervous because the whole cake is designed around the strawberries, and does Leia _not_ like strawberries? Shit, she has no backup plan.

“No, yeah, she likes strawberries. I just didn’t realize you remembered that,” he says. And he’s pushing the bowl of icing out of the way and crossing to her. When his hand goes for her waist, she’s got half a mind to bat him away. This is important and she’s _working_ , but his fingers feel good as they push under the fabric of her shirt and spread across her hip.

“Well, I want them to like me,” she says. “So I was paying attention.”

“I want you to like _them_ ,” he says. And she could laugh because the idea is so ridiculous, but he looks kind of tense, his jaw clenched, his eyes a little flinty. His fingers start to slide up her back, pressing her against the kitchen island.

“I’m going to hold you to that,” Rey says, trying for a laugh but only sort of rasping the words out as his fingers send sparks up her spine. She sets the ice cube down on the counter, forgetting it immediately.

“It’s going to be fine,” he murmurs. He reaches for the carton of strawberries and flicks the plastic lid open with one movement of his strong fingers. It snaps in the air, and then he’s picking up a strawberry and holding it in front of her mouth to bite.

“Open your mouth,” he says, quiet and low and _holy_ shit.

She does, and he puts the strawberry right on her tongue. She bites into the soft flesh and a burst of sugary, fresh goodness explodes in her mouth.

He watches her, hungry and tense and laser focused. She’s aware only of his hands touching her, the sugar on her tongue, the heat of her latest burn mixing together all of it at once, hypersensitive and anxious and turned on.

He tugs at the knot on the back of her apron. It comes loose. She’s standing on her toes as he pushes the neck of her sweater aside, presses his mouth into the dip of her collar bone. Rey leans her head back, reaches her hands around, and tugs at the hem of his shirt. Yanks it up. Presses her hand flat against his lower back.  

He pulls her sweater off over her head, taking the apron with it, and all but throws the ball of fabric across the room. 

They get powdered sugar _everywhere._

X

One hot shower and a car ride later, and Rey and Ren fidget on the threshold of his parent’s house. Ren is watching her with that scrutinizing smile of his, looking well fucked and calm as he waits for her to give him the signal. Her cake is in a box in his arms, and she’d tied a bow around it like it’s a real present. In light of the stunning mid century ranch home Ren’s parents live in, it seems hopelessly childish.

Why couldn’t she have done something more sophisticated? Lavender, or something? Gordon Ramsey had a video about chocolate ganache, for crying out loud. She shifts in her shoes, breathing deeply. Her hand goes to the burn on her arm. She’s not going to have a panic attack over a cake. She’s not going to have a panic attack over a stupid cake.

 _And anyway_ , says a voice in her head, _they wouldn’t have been fooled. They would still be able to tell. Even if you made ganache_

Ren’s voice cuts into the chatter. “Rey. Relax.”

Her voice is whip sharp, because really, fuck that. “ _You_ relax.”

He arches a brow. “I was relaxed two hours ago when I had my-”

She makes a choking noise. “Kylo, we are at your _parents_ house!”

He just grins and runs a thumb down her cheek.

“We don’t have to do this,” he says, low and a little intense, and wonders if he’s nervous about this, too. She relaxes her grip on her cake just fractionally.

“No, I want to do this,” she says, drawing in a thick lungful of night air.

His hand skims her ear lobe, tucking a strand behind her ears. She’s braided it tonight, but the bits in front have fallen loose. Two weeks of eating regularly and using Ren’s face wash and conditioner have done good things for her hair and skin, and she thinks she looks better than she did before. Almost pretty.

She shifts the cake to her hip, biting a lip.

“Okay. Okay. Do I look-”

“Are you wearing the red bra?” he says.

She had to change it, because the red turned white under the sugar, and anyway she’s pretty sure that bra ended up on top the fridge. Rey blows out a long breath. “Kylo. Focus.”

His hands run down her sides. “I _am_ focused.”

“Oh my god, just knock,” Rey says.

He gives her one last smile, the private, tender one he sends her when no one else is looking, and raises a hand. He gets two knocks in before the door is wrenched open and Rey gets her first glimpse of the Organa-Solos.

In front is his mother, Leia. Rey understands immediately why she’s in front, because the strong shoulders and direct gaze tell Rey that Leia Organa-Solo just _should_ go first.

She is pulling her son into a very firm hug, and it’s strange that such a giant man came from someone so petite.

“So good to see you, Ben.”

Her voice is honey warm, but kind of scratchy. Like a wool sweater. And she speaks like she means it, too. Not like it’s a platitude, but like it really _is_ nice to see him.

Then she releases her son and turns her attention to Rey, that direct gaze taking in all of her at once. Rey can do this. She can do this. She hands the cake to Ren and steps into her open arms like she’s going to battle.

Rey’s been hugged before, but this one is different. Leia _squeezes_. Leia makes a _hmmm_ noise right in her ear, like she’s purring. And she’s not like a TV mom, but she’s warm and she smells like some kind of fruit, and her arms around Rey’s lower back are firm.

“So nice to meet you, Rey,” Leia says, right against her ear. Rey closes her eyes for a second just to feel it a little more.

Then she’s being held at arm’s length again, just like Kylo does, and inspected from top to foot. The woman’s gaze is appraising and quick, a steely flint in her eyes that reminds her, strangely, a little of Phasma. Assessing but fair.

Rey’s mental drilling kicks in as Leia squeezes her hand. “Nice to meet you Mrs. Organa-Solo, I-”

Leia takes Rey by the hand and turns around to call through the open door. “Han, she’s here, for crying out loud,” Then she turns back to Rey. “Please call me Leia, won’t you?”

At Rey’s side, Kylo says. “Mom, you’re crushing her.”

Rey can only marvel as Leia turns on her heel, points a finger at her son. “None of that, young man, I have several very incriminating photos of you that I am not afraid to share. _Han!_ ”

A grizzled, sand colored man with white hair emerges in the doorway. His eyes narrow and his jaw is set in a hard line, but his eyes _sparkle._ She’s never seen a person with so much mischief in the eyes, and she likes him on sight. Han is someone familiar.

He says, “Easy does it, highness, I’m here. Ben, good to see you.” He shakes his son’s hand and then those mischief eyes land right on Rey. “Ah, there she is.”

And he doesn’t try and hug her, to Rey’s intense relief, but he does give her a very roguish smile. Like he’s been expecting her and she’s exactly what he ordered. Behind them, the setting sun hovers above the top of the mountains.

He leans forward a little. “Thought my son would have scared you off.”

And she can’t help it, Rey snorts, because she likes to tease Kylo, too.

“No sir, he’s too nice for that.”

Kylo takes one step forward so he’s right at her back, and Han grins. Leia looks a little misty eyed.

“Rey baked you a cake,” Ren declares, interrupting the moment. “She’s been obsessing about it for like ten days, so be nice.”

“I wasn’t _obsessing_ ,” Rey says, jabbing her elbow back at him. He dodges, chuckling to himself, and Rey turns to take the cake back from his hands before he drops it in a fit of pure snark.

“Neither of these two ever baked me a cake,” she says, giving her son a look that suddenly makes Rey understand the military nickname. But there’s so much affection in that smile, so much good humor and understanding that the words have no sting to them. It’s almost sarcastic. But it isn’t.  

“Can we go inside, or...?” Kylo says.

Leia blinks, “Oh, of course. What am I thinking, Han, for the love of god, get back to the grill, the roast is probably burning.”

X

Rey watches very carefully as Leia Organa lifts up the serving spoon. She has elegant hands, and her bracelets slink down her wrists without ever hitting the bowl. She takes what Rey estimates to be about half a baseball’s worth of potatoes and deposits it on her plate without pausing her story.

“So of course Han buys the thing,” she’s saying, and she hands the bowl of potatoes to her son while smiling fondly at her husband across the table. Ren takes a full baseball’s worth of mashed potatoes and drops it on his plate. He doesn’t do it with half as much elegance, but Rey admires his portion size anyway.

“The chasse was pristine, engine in decent shape for her age,” Han says in an undertone, leaning over slightly so the words go straight to Rey. Rey takes the bowl of potatoes from Ren, looks at it, and sets it on the table in front of her.

“That seller robbed you,” Leia interjects. “Ben, back me up here.”

Kylo arches a brow. “Mom’s right.”

Han’s eyes narrow, but his lips quirk. “You’re only agreeing because it’s her birthday.”

Leia laughs. It’s a pretty sound, merry and rich. Then she looks at Rey’s empty plate and her eyes are keen and thoughtful as they flit up to Rey’s face, and she feels herself tense, because oh god, is she offended?

But Leia’s gaze slides to Ren instead, and her tone is just a gentle scold.

“Ben, serve your girlfriend some potatoes.”

He sits up a little straighter. “Want me to cut her meat for her too?”

Rey glances over at the scowl on his face, a little startled by his tone. He’s tense, his shoulders tight. Leia’s eyes narrow slightly, shrewd and assessing.

“She’s our guest, Ben,” Leia says.

And Rey looks at him, a little stung for some reason. But Ren gives her a look that seems to say _I’m sorry, know you could do this on your own but please indulge me, it is her birthday._ All she can think is that by some strange twist of fate, she is sitting in Kylo Ren’s parents’ house with a birthday cake and warm wood paneling and a friendly dog under the table. And it doesn’t feel real. It’s like she’s impersonating someone, and it’s _working_.

Kylo’s the one with the attitude problem, not her. Ren keeps looking over at her like he’s expecting her to flee the scene or burst into flames or something.  

“Thank you,” is all she says, and she bites down on a smile as Ren piles her plate with potatoes. She wonders if he’s enjoying the family dinner, and, more than that, if she’s enjoying it. Her nerves about his parents were clearly unfounded, but now there’s portion sizes and Ren acting different and wondering if it’s always been like that, or if his change in mood is her fault.

“Rey, tell me about yourself,” Leia says, turning her gaze on Rey.

Rey clears her throat. “I work at a bar out in Mountain Spring, but I took some time off to get my GED.”

Han grins. “I took the GED. Hated every minute of it, but it’s not hard.”

“Han used to be something of a rough and tumble young man,” Leia adds. “Not unlike his son, who gave us a hell of a time, you don’t even know, Rey.”

And Han is grinning, and that doesn’t make sense either, because she knows for a fact that Han is a successful police detective with a bunch of honors, and how the hell had he dropped out of high school?

And again she feels this pressing consciousness that she’s missing something, that something was so fundamentally absent from her life that when she sees it in front of her she can’t even recognize it well enough to feel sad.

Being with Kylo never made her feel like this. But then, Rey never ached for Kylo the way she ached for a family or a home or someone to insist she eat her mashed potatoes.  

Rey takes a bite as Han quips back, and Kylo smiles, and Leia Organa smiles, and they all look at each other as Rey stands at the edge of this huge rend in the world. The potatoes are warm in her mouth, and she closes her eyes to try and commit the sensation to memory. Tries to remember the sound of Leia’s silver bracelets gently ringing in the air. How it felt to be held in her arms for a second with Kylo Ren at her back.

“Rey, wanna help me clear the plates?” Han says, setting his napkin in his lap.

“Oh, sure,” Rey says, pushing her chair back and setting her napkin down too, because she’s prepared for this one. She did dishes all the time at the bar.  

Ren grips her hand as she reaches for his plate.

“You don’t have to,” he says quietly. “You’re the guest.”

Han reaches across the table and starts collecting plates.

“Attention to table manners,” Han says dryly. “That’s new.”

Leia beams. “He’s worried we’re making a bad impression on her.”

“Mom,” Ren grumbles. He still has his hand on Rey’s and she disengages it by taking his plate.

“It’s okay, I can do this,” Rey says in an undertone. She knows her cheeks are pinking, but she hopes the dim lighting will hide it a little. He lets go of her hand but stands up and starts clearing plates too.

They make quick work of piling the dishes in stacks and hauling them to the kitchen, and while Han makes coffee Rey arranges the strawberries in a ring around the top of her cake. Then they all press back into the dining room where Leia is beaming, and Rey sets the cake in front of her on the dining room table. It’s pretty and round and covered in candles.

Rey takes a lighter in one shaking hand, flicks it into life, and sets every single one of those candles on fire.  

X

After dinner, he gives her a tour.

His bedroom is an office now, so he points out the holes in the wall, the window he’d snuck out of, the light fixture overhead that he’d broken. He shows her the living room with its huge copper colored fireplace, stacked with dried logs. He shows her Han’s pet project car in the garage and rolls his eyes at Han’s extensive plans for its improvement. But he tells her detail after detail, and she comes to form an impression of a childhood spent happily and restlessly. All three of them seemed to have had very separate lives.  

Ren takes her into a big room in the very back of the house full of Vegas memorabilia that wouldn’t be out of place at the Scavenger. With a flick of a switch, the room fills with a diffused glow, sending soft light across framed photos of Frank Sinatra and Marilyn Monroe, an old pinball machine, and a TV with a big couch. It’s instantly her favorite room in the house, and Rey marvels at what something as simple as lighting and a soft carpet can do to make a space feel comfortable. Then she catches sight of what looks like school photos and makes a beeline for them.

“You were so cute,” Rey enthuses. “Look at your ears!”

Ren makes a disgruntled noise. “ _Rey_.”

She’s not usually a gushy person, but looking at middle school Kylo in a polo shirt and a mop of dark hair makes her want to go full-on sap. She only had a few school photos taken in her life, and she has no idea where they ended up. It occurs to her that she wouldn’t know how to show Ren a photo of her younger self is she wanted to. Not that she does, but still. She might have liked the option.

He walks up behind her, his footsteps soft on the plush carpet. His arms go around her waist and he tugs her against his body so they’re looking at the photo together, his chin resting on the top of her head. His voice vibrates against her skull.

“That was a couple years before I started getting in fights.”

“Didn’t your mom care?” Rey murmurs. Plutt didn’t like her getting into fights. Too many bruises.

She feels him shrug, the muscles of his arms contracting and rippling against her. “They were busy, and I wasn’t the easiest kid to control.”

Rey thinks about Leia’s quick eyes, about the potatoes, and wonders if Leia Organa-Solo was just as good at handling skittish creatures as her son.

“Maybe she just knew she couldn’t stop you.”

He laughs and his hand slips down into hers. “C’mere.”

And she lets herself be tugged over to the corner of the room, where an old fashioned jukebox blinks gently next to the couch. It glints coppery and shiny like a new penny, and she’s out of his arms and stumbling forward to get a better look at it. She’s seen these before, but never in a private home. Rey lets out a breathless sigh of pure longing.

“Just like in a diner,” Rey whispers.

“My dad likes to collect old shit,” Ren says, casual, but she can hear the pleasure in his voice. And he’s brushing her out of the way and stepping up next to her, his fingers moving deftly across the keypad. It operates without coins, and the music comes out from speakers in the ceiling.

Rey holds her breath as the music swells, and then Etta James starts to sing.

_At last, my love has come along._

Rey’s never been one for love songs, but Etta James makes Rey want to curl into a ball and purr. She has goose bumps. Real, honest to god goose bumps, because it’s so beautiful. It’s just so damn beautiful.

Ren pulls her close and she leans her head against his chest, her head heavy as his fingers run down her back, ghosting from freckle to freckle through her clothes. He knows where they are without looking now. He knows her body. Knows her.

Etta sings about thrills, and joys, and love, and how life is like a song, and Rey rests her head on her man and sways back and forth. He hums along with the thrumming music, and sometimes mumbles the words into her hair.

He and Etta James sing right into her, _for you are mine at last._

Her fingers go tight on his jacket, _and life is like a song._

“Rey,” he murmurs, and his voice is so soft. So gentle. She’s being swallowed by a tide of emotion, she’s going to fucking cry. Right here in his parents’ house. Not the defeated tears, not happy ones, but something that cuts just through the middle.

Ren doesn’t stop swaying, and she just leans her head against his chest and opens her eyes wide so the water won’t pool on her lashes. Her eyes land on the window opening up onto a view of a brilliant pink sunset, the sky flaring rose colored and dreamy like a valentine’s day card, punctuated with a few street lights that hang in the air like frozen fireflies.

“Fuck,” she whispers, and she wipes a tear off her waterline before it can fall.

“I know,” he says, and his voice is hoarse.

She’s not ready for the song to end, for any of this to end, but the background beat in her chest is promising her, threatening her with _soon, soon, at last_. The song drops away, fades into silence and they’re just standing there in the center of this beautiful room with his nice parents and the smell of blown out candles in the air.

She wants to tell him that she feels like that song when he holds her. And she probably should, because this moment, right now, is one of the best ones already, so much so that it already hurts.

“I need to ask you something,” he murmurs.

Rey looks up at him. His eyes are intent, focused, serious, and her heart is in her _throat_. She can’t talk, because if she opens her mouth he’ll hear how close she is to the edge right now. So she just nods, and his arms go fractionally tighter around her until she’s almost bowing against his body

“Let me take him out,” he murmurs, his voice low and pleading.

Rey blinks, too startled to really react except to say. “Kylo?”

His voice is low. “Who fucking knows what the client is going to do with this report. Maybe Plutt will wind up dead anyway. It won’t make a difference. So let me do it. Let me take this from you.”

And he’s made her this offer before, and she’d been in his arms that time, too, both of them laying in her bed when he’d promised her that he could make it end. And she hadn’t believed him then, hadn’t thought that would do anything, but now she knows better.

He’s watching her face and god knows what she must look like to him.

“No,” she whispers. “No.”

He frowns and his voice is thick. “Please. I can’t- I can’t _sleep_ , Rey.”

She shakes her head. “I don’t want that on us. I don’t want him to always be there, always be… around, I don’t want you to have him hanging around your head for the rest of our life.”

He doesn’t look at all surprised.

“But you still want him dead,” he says, and tucks a strand of hair behind her ear.

“Yes.” The word is black and heavy in that lovely room with its soft light. “But not like that.”

“Just promise me you’ll tell me what you’re planning,” he murmurs. “If you’re going to do something, I need to fucking know, Rey.”

“I will,” she says. And he exhales a little, his breath fanning across her temple.

“Do you have a plan?” There’s a note of professional interest lacing his words now, and it makes it easier to talk about it when she doesn’t think he’s going to go full lone wolf on her at any moment.

“No,” Rey says, and _means_ it. “I’m just waiting.”

“For what?”

She doesn’t answer. She doesn’t know.

X

Days pass. Nights pass.

He works late and comes home with a wild look in his eyes, his hands covered in oil or ink or smelling like bleach. He finds her in his bed, curled up in his sweater, and wakes her up with desperate, hungry kisses pressed into her mouth. And she reaches her arms out for him every time and tugs his clothes off, yanking at fabric and skin and hair until she feels almost close enough to him. Until it’s almost enough.

And every time he sinks into her, his eyes find hers and hold them. It doesn’t matter if she’s on top or he is, it doesn’t matter what his hands have done during the day, it doesn’t matter that they haven’t said a damn thing to each other, he tells her that she’s good. That she’s so good.

And she gives herself over to the feeling of his body on her and in her, and in the movement and the feeling she comes so close to believing it. Again and again she darts toward that line as he pushes against her. And her toes curl on themselves and she digs her nails into her palms and forearms so hard that she makes cuts there that she only sees in the morning.

Then one night he doesn’t come back. She wakes up with a fading dream still clouding her mind, and glances around the room. There’s no jeans tossed on the floor, no dark body next to hers. Her hand goes for her phone, and she looks at the time. It’s almost three am. He’s not home, because if he were home, he’d be with her.

So she calls him just as BB8 jumps up on the mattress, padding over to Rey’s waiting hands. As it rings, she looks out the window at the dimly lit scrubland behind his house. The dirt and dead brush are unmoving in the still air.

He picks up. “Hey, sorry, almost done here. Should have called. What are you doing up?”

She shakes her head, though he can’t see it.

“I just wanted to check on you. You guys going to send it over tonight?”

His voice is gruff. “Fucking finally. Had to clean the damn thing and run every reference twice because a certain red haired asshole-“ Ren cuts off and there’s a sound of a distant, clipped retort. Then a different voice. Finn’s, she thinks. Ren says, “Oh, right. Rey, you want to have a party tomorrow? I feel like celebrating.”

“Sure,” she says, because, hell, she does. She’s never thought of herself a hugely social person, but she’s going a little stir crazy.

His voices goes low. “We can celebrate you taking your test, too.”

Rey grins, rubbing BB8 right between his ears. “I won’t know if passed for a week or two.”

He scoffs. “You passed.”

“Guess we’ll find out,” she mutters. _Soon._

Someone on his end says something. Ren’s voice is muffled but she’s pretty sure Ren says something about Jello shots being off the table.

“Fuck,” he says on an exhale. “I’m so ready for this to be over.”

Rey feels a stab of guilt, because his stress is her fault.

“You good?” Ren says.

“I’m good,” Rey says.

There’s a long pause.

“You lying?” he says.

“Come home,” Rey hears herself say. She almost doesn’t recognize her own voice.

“Soon,” he promises. She hangs up.

X

The house is full of people ranging from lightly buzzed to completely wasted, with a nice scattering of stoners in the mix to keep anything from getting out of hand. She knows some of them, but most of them are strangers.

Rey’s swinging her legs on the island bar stool as Finn mixes Poe a drink. He pours a shot of whiskey, a shot of vodka, and a shot of tequila into a red cup and stirs it with a plastic spoon, looking for all the world like a bartender on the Strip. This party has a more frantic energy than the first party she’d been to, and Rey wonders if the city’s increased police activity has made everyone a little tense.

“I call it a Poe Boy,” he says.

Rey eyes it skeptically. “It’s just three shots of the worst alcohol in the house mixed together.”

Finn grins. “Yeah, exactly. It’s a disaster.”

Rey grins, rolling her eyes. “You should let me make you something, since I’m a bartender.”

Or at least she _was_ a bartender.  

Poe appears at their side, cheeks flushed.

“Finn, my man, is that for me?” he says.

Behind him, people group in small circles, talking loudly over the thundering music.

Finn hands him the drink. “Here you go! One Poe Boy.”

Ren emerges from behind the fridge door, handing a Capri Sun to Rey and a beer to Finn.

“You should call it a dirty old man, if you’re naming it after Poe,” Ren says dryly.

Rey stabs the drink with the plastic straw and takes a shallow sip.

“You’re one to talk,” Poe says, utterly unconcerned and taking a long pull from Finn’s concoction.

“Let’s toast,” Poe says, raising his voice.

“To endings,” Finn says.

“And beginnings,” Ren adds, and he says it straight to her.

They raise their drinks and touch them together, then they drink deeply. Rey finishes her juice pouch in three huge gulps, and the sweet taste lingers on her tongue.

Ren crosses over to Rey, putting his hands on the back of her barstool and spinning it around so she’s looking up at him, her back to Finn and Poe.

Ren is looking at Poe. “You got what I asked for?” he says, very film noir suddenly.

Rey glances over her shoulder, because Poe is grabbing a cardboard box from underneath a case of beer, pushing two people out of the way before he makes it back to their group. He tosses the box to Ren, who catches it and sets it in Rey’s lap. Rey glares up at him, because they’ve talked about presents before. Talked and _talked._

“It’s not a present,” he says quickly.

“It’s symbolic, and it’s from all of us,” Finn adds.

Feeling nervous, Rey turns her chair around again and meets their gazes. The song switches to something upbeat and electric and Rey pulls at the flaps of the box. A gleam of black shines through, and then she’s lifting out the coolest leather jacket in the entire world.

It’s heavy and thick, and she can smell even over the beer in the air. There’s the First Order logo in a discrete light gray color on the shoulders.

“A motorcycle jacket,” Rey murmurs, a little thunderstruck. It’s heavy and fine in her hands. There’s a soft lining on the inside and matte black trim.

Poe says, “We all have them, and we thought, you know, since you’re with the good guys now-”

Ren puts a hand on her shoulder and it disappears under his fingers.

“I want you to wear it,” he says, cutting Poe off.

“It’ll protect you,” Finn adds, eager for her to be excited about this. “Now that our project’s wrapped.”

“You’re a badass, Rey,” Poe summarizes. “Thanks for all your help.”

Rey pushes her shoulders back like Ren does and sits up a little straighter, but she doesn’t feel like a badass. She feels like a birthday candle burning out on the ground, and something like panic comes clawing up her throat, because what comes after this? What happens next? Everything up until now has been a bus line she never got on through a landscape she only ever wanted to get out of.

Las Vegas, Flagstaff, Maricopa…

And then Ren’s turning her back around so she’s facing him and his hands are deftly pulling the jacket over her shoulders. There’s a kind of deep satisfaction in the set of his brow and the glint of his eye. She pushes her arms through the sleeves and the fit is perfect.

“I had it made custom,” he murmurs.

Rey’s hands fiddle with the zipper, but she can’t quite bring herself to close herself up in it. Not when the room is this hot and the air is so pressing and everything’s so _loud._

Rey looks at arms and hands, inspecting herself. Plutt’s cronies had tattoos. Ren’s side prefers expensive jackets, apparently.

“Thank you,” she tells him. Poe whoops and a few people look over, roused from drinking or gossiping or swapping intel, and Ren _glares_ at all of them until they look away.

Finn, oblivious, leans down and says, “One of us! One of us!” over and over until Poe joins in.

“If Hux could hear us now,” Ren mutters, but he tilts Rey’s chin up with one calloused finger and leans down to kiss her right there, right in front of half the city. She goes stiff for a second, but his hands on her neck and his mouth on hers is hypnotic and familiar, and her hands slip to his back, to the belt loop on his jeans. She knots her fingers there, pulling him just a little closer.

In the back of her mind, she’s conscious of the weight of the jacket on her shoulders and the sound of string music swelling.

Poe coughs. “Ren, they _get_ it.”

Ren’s hand goes up to her neck and he holds her like that for a few more seconds. Then he breaks the kiss and glares at Poe.

Poe just arches a brow. “You gonna give her a hickey too, while you’re at it?”

“Fuck off,” Ren says, but he’s laughing, his hand still resting comfortably on her hip, his eyes scanning the room around him.

Possessive. He’s being _possessive_.

“I’m calling it for the night,” Rey says, pushing him back a little. “I want to take a shower and hit the hay.”

His eyes are searching on her face, and she smiles at him, warm like Leia does, she hopes. “Plus, I want to check out the jacket in a full-length mirror.”

He leans forward, eyes dancing, and he looks as pleased as a cat with a mouse in a corner.

“Let me know if you want help taking it off.”

And she laughs, because she can’t help it. It’s 10:30pm.

She’s jogging up the stairs when Her phone starts to ring. She almost misses it over the music that echoes around the two story space, and for a terrifying second she's sure that it’s Plutt. He heard about the report and he’s found her new number and he’s going to find her-

She pulls her phone out of her pocket and nearly throws it across the room before she notices the name on the front.

“Phasma?”

“It’s been two weeks,” she says, not bothering with small talk.

Rey draws a shuddering breath as the feeling comes back into her fingers and toes. “Yeah.”

“I need you tonight. Bartender has food poisoning. I’m dying without backup.”

Rey reaches the top of the stairs and slips into Ren’s bedroom, shutting the door behind her. The dull roar of voices dims, and she can hear herself think again.

She clears her throat and says, “What time?”

“From now to closing,” Phasma says. Rey hears the sound of the bar, a familiar, drunken rumble of voices. “I wouldn’t ask if I wasn’t sort of desperate.”

“I’m trying to lie low,” Rey murmurs. “I don’t know...”

“He make you quit or something?” Phasma says.

Rey glares at the ceiling. “No.”

“He your new boss?”

Annoyed now, Rey snaps, “No.”

“So do your actual employer a solid and fill in tonight,” she says coolly. “I’ll even drive you back to your castle afterwards.”

She’s at the end of her promise. Her fingers grip the hem of her jacket, a gift from her friends that feels too tight around her body even though it fits perfectly.

“Fine,” Rey grumbles. “I’ll head over.”

“Bless,” Phasma says dryly, and hangs up.

Rey leans heavily against the door and stares up at the ceiling, because what the actual fuck is she thinking? She’d let Phasma rile her up, push her buttons. It’s the reason Phas is so good at pool competitions, and it shouldn’t have worked on her.

But her nerves are taught, and anyway it doesn’t matter. Her whole life has been about pushing her luck, so she may as well be consistent. Kylo won’t have the right to be _too_ mad.

The noise of the party presses in on her as she opens the door and walks out down the stairs and into the huge foyer. There are dozens of people milling around, the front door is wide open and the lights of the house are throwing long golden lines into the driveway.  

Rey tightens her shoelaces, takes a deep breath, walks into the night. She only glances back over her shoulder once. She pulls out her phone and sends a quick text to Phasma.

_See you soon._

X

She’s just off the bus and it’s three minutes to eleven when her phone rings.

“Finn?” Rey says, surprised. She’s walking from the bus stop up the hill to the bar, her shoes crunching on the gravel underfoot.

His voice is low. “Rey, where the hell are you? I came up to check on you because you seemed… off, but you’re not _here_ -”

“I’m at the Scavenger. Phas called and she really needed backup. She’s giving me a ride home and I got here safe and the report is in, so I thought- Look, has Kylo noticed yet?” Rey says, fingers gripping the phone.

“Why is that what you’re asking me right now?” Finn says, and his voice is low and _angry._ He’s never angry with her. “He hasn’t noticed, but I’m going to tell him. What the actual _fuck_ are you thinking?”

Rey clears the edge of the parking lot. She’s walking fast.

“Don’t, Finn, please don’t tell him.”

“If this is some weird self-reliance thing. I know he can be a grouchy bastard, but he cares about you so much,” Finn says. “And I refuse to watch you self-sabotage, Rey.”

She rubs her temple against the sound of his voice. Why does it hurt so much when someone loves you? Rey passes rows of parked cars, silver bikes leaning silent and expectant under the rising moon.

“If I stayed at that party with all those people and him acting like that, I would have run off and not come back.”

There’s a beat of silence. The music on Finn’s end clashes with the music coming from the Scavenger. She glowers at two guys standing just outside the front door and they raise their eyebrows and put out their cigarettes, walking for the alley like they’re afraid she might bite. She’s about ten feet from the door.

“Has it been that bad?” he says quietly.

“I _need_ this,” she whispers.

Ahead of her, the door opens and a flash of light and sound spills out. She hesitates on the front steps, knowing she should be inside helping, knowing she shouldn’t have come here in the first place.

Finn sighs. “Okay, peanut. Just… please be careful.”

“I will be,” she says. Promises.

She makes it into the bar with just seconds to go till the clock hits 11.

X

It’s amazing how easily she falls back into it. The press of people, the serving and the cajoling and the arguing over pens. It’s like she never left. She sees some familiar faces and some new ones, Phasma smirks at her the whole time, and Rey resolutely refuses to look at her phone. There’s one fight, but Phas breaks it up without incident. Rey keeps her eyes peeled for any trouble or anyone she knows, but she sees nothing. Most of the people associated with Plutt must have fled by now, scared off by cops and the rumors that Ren and his team have been spreading.

When they finally kick everyone out around two, Rey is sweaty, exhausted, and not thinking about horrible shit for the first time in days. She and Phasma wipe tables and collect tips and close tabs. They call taxis, they sweep up.

By the time she hears the Scavengers landline ringing, it’s just the two of them left, and it’s like old times, a little. Rey sets down her armful of cups and sighs, because she knows who’s going to be. She’s been ignoring her cell, so she should have expected him to call her at the restaurant. Rey ducks behind the bar and around the corner to the empty kitchen where the phone is ringing. It’s one of those old-fashioned ones with a spiraling cord, and she leans against the cool concrete wall and lifts up the receiver.

“Scavenger Bar and Grill,” Rey says, bracing herself.

But not enough.

“Rey girl,” Unkar says. “You fucked up and we’re going to have a chat about it.”

She goes blank. She goes all the way blank down to the tips of her toes. All the color, all the scratches, all the petty annoyances she’s built up over the past few weeks that have been etching permanent marks into the desert of her life go flat and dead. She’s all sand, insubstantial and ground to pieces.

Into that blankness, he says, “You ratted me out.”

His voice is watery like he’s not holding the phone near his mouth, and she can tell he’s trying not to sound high or drunk because his words are over-articulated.

“I’ve been waiting for you to show your scrawny head around town,” he says. “But you’ve been hiding from me, haven’t you?”

Rey’s sneaker slips on the tile floor and her hand grips the door frame to hold herself up. She can hear an odd sound coming from the front of the restaurant but she can’t even begin to interpret what it means. Her head is screaming at her to hang up, that he can’t hurt her anymore, hang _up_ but what comes out instead is-

“No, no I didn’t, I would never-" 

And she’s lying again because she’s a bad person, and what is that _noise_?

He acts like he hasn’t heard her. “It’s like you forget what you owe me. I should kill you. No one would notice.”

The words hit the side of her head, metallic and untrue. And she wants to say that Kylo would notice, that Kylo would kill him if she asked.

But he’s still talking, his words starting to slur together. “I can’t tolerate it anymore, Rey. I tried, I did, but I just…”

And he trails off, and in the sudden silence on the line she can finally hear the noise, finally parse it out over the thick taste of her fear in her throat.

Rey glances straight down the length of the bar to the other side, to the only other exit, where Phasma is yanking on the huge metal doors. They don’t open even though she’s throwing her body against them. There’s something strange about the lights in the room. It’s too dim.

“I’m didn’t _want_ this,” Plutt says. Almost plaintive. Almost a plea. Phasma yells something. Something is _wrong_.

Rey opens her mouth to say something, maybe to tell him to go to hell, maybe not. It doesn’t matter what she would have said.

Her words die on her tongue, smothered by the smoke she can taste in the air.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks to the tireless [AmyZini](http://archiveofourown.org/users/amyzini) for beta'ing! I'm taking a bit more time between chapters to get the final arc of this story right, so I apologize if there's more of a wait than usual. This story means a lot to me on a personal level and I care a lot about how it ends. Big ups to HyenaHunny and Lifeofsnark for their intelligence and sense of humor.  
> Also, wanted to shout out some really cool things that came out of the last chapter.
> 
>  
> 
> [This incredible moodboard by Reylorobyn2011](https://violetwilson.tumblr.com/post/170555041922/reylorobyn2011-i-made-this-aesthetic-for) and this [equally incredible two part moodboard by reylostarwarstrash.](https://violetwilson.tumblr.com/post/170546711402/reylostarwarstrash-super-bowl-was-last-night)
> 
>  
> 
> Also, holy crap, [Gajeely drew the garage almost-kiss ](https://violetwilson.tumblr.com/post/170858752962/gajeely-she-shakes-her-head-takes-another-step) from [ chapter five](http://archiveofourown.org/works/12557112/chapters/29159553) and it's so COOL.
> 
>  
> 
> If you want to know what shenanigans everyone's favorite red-headed control freak was up to during chapter 15, you can read AmyZini's [super funny coffee shop tale set in the OIYWT world.](https://archiveofourown.org/works/13619409)
> 
>  
> 
> My blog for Star Wars memes, the occasional story poll, moodboards, and extras, is [here!](https://violetwilson.tumblr.com/) If you have any requests or questions, my ask box is always open.  
> Thanks to all of you who leave reviews, it really really means a ton to me. I feel creatively fulfilled for the first time in a long time and you guys are a huge part of that.


	17. Fire Fight

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> BACK AT IT.

**Ch 17.**

**Fire Fight.**

_Ren_

All the fun drains out of the night when Rey leaves. The crowd gets noisier and drunker, and he keeps thinking of how she’d looked as he’d zipped her up, all leggy and bright eyed and distracting. 

He makes it through about ten minutes of small talk about a protection job he has zero intention of picking before his patience runs out and he makes for the stairs at front of the house.

He tells himself that he’s not going to wake her up, that he’s just going to check on her. See if she’s still wearing the jacket.

Pushing through the noise, the whole party is suddenly insufferable. It had been fine and well before he’d had Rey around, but now that he knows how much he likes just being at home with her, all he want to do is watch a movie and maybe eat her out on the couch or take her on a ride around the edge of the city and hear her toss a laugh into the wind as she digs her fucking fingers into his stomach way too hard.

He pushes past a group of New York dancers imported for the start of the spring show cycle, past a few legit MC guys in cuts, and nearly runs into Poe as he clears the corner.

“You seen Finn?” Poe says, brow furrowed. He looks fidgety and agitated as he leans forward to be heard over the noise.

Ren arches a brow, half shouting. “Isn’t it a little early in the night for you to go chasing down Finn?”

Poe points a finger at him. “Pot. Kettle.”

Kylo shrugs, grimacing a little. His phone vibrates at his hip and he pulls it out of his pocket, leaving Poe standing expectantly in front of him.

“What, Hux?” Ren says, speaking up to be heard over the dull roar of voices and rock music making his light fixtures rattle.

“Are you still in possession of your sobriety?” Hux says, his voice as acerbic and dry as ever.

“Please tell me this call isn’t about paperwork,” Ren mutters.

Poe’s eyebrows go up and Ren jerks his head toward the stairs, dismissing Poe from whatever the hell Hux wants. The guy deserves a break, and Ren’s pretty sure if Poe has to sit still for an hour listening to a debrief or whatever urgent fucking thing Hux apparently needs on a Friday night, Poe might expire right here on the floor.

Poe gives him a grateful smile and heads for the stairs.  

Ren makes for his office while, in his ear, Hux says, “We need to go over some of our wrap-up items on this project, and I’m not going to wait you _deign_ to roll out of bed tomorrow to set it up. What is your availability like?”

“Oh, your efficiency shit, right,” Ren mutters. It’s a bunch of internal red tape they can whip out to impress potential investors and document “provable business growth practices,” but Hux can be a real fascist about it. They do it after every project, and for once Ren is looking forward to signing the damn things. He wants this behind him.

But no way in hell does he doesn’t want Hux coming by the house with an iPad and a stack of papers tomorrow, not with Rey on edge and the team waiting around like everything's about to blow up. He doesn’t want to watch Rey’s eyes go distant and uneasy at the sight of all of them in the living room signing shit. He wants to do this last thing the way he likes to do everything: quick, on the down low, and out of the public eye.  

He says, “Fine. I'll do it right now.”

There’s a beat of silence. Ren can think of only a few times that he has genuinely surprised Armitage Hux, but this is apparently one of them.

“You know we can’t do this over the phone,” Hux snaps.

“Then I’ll come to the office. I want this done,” Ren growls, and the intensity in his voice surprises even him.  

“Now?”

“Yes, right now,” Ren snaps. “What, did you suddenly develop a social life?”

Hux sniffs. “In point of fact, I _am_ at the office. I’m wrapping up this absurdly complicated, protocol-breaking project that you dragged out.”

“Great, then I’ll see you soon.”

He hangs up, feeling for the keys to his bike in his pocket. He moves, not looking at anyone, not saying jack shit, just taking care of this one last thing. And he knows he’s being stupid, but he wants this paperwork out of the way so this whole thing can just be over and fucking done with.

The garage is cool and quieter than the rest of the house, blessedly removed from the chaos inside. The garage door opens with a satisfying grind of metal on metal. It’s crazy how much better he feels just being away from the noise. 

His mind drifts one last time to Rey upstairs, thinking of the way her hair is probably fanning out on the pillow, one knee jutting into the air because she sleeps like a teenager, all curled up into the shape of a question mark on his bed.

“Almost done,” he mutters, half to the image of her and half to himself.

A faint suggestion of stars glitter overhead.  

x

Ren leans back in his chair, rubbing his temples like he can knead out the headache brewing behind his eyes. Across from him, Hux calmly sips coffee from his black mug, eyes scanning over the stack of paperwork they’ve just approved. Hux looks as pleased as he ever does.

Ren taps a pen against the counter, trying to synchronize his breathing with the beat. They’ve been going over this for what feels like a small eternity, and even though it’s all filed and signed, he doesn’t feel any better.

Ten miles away, the party is probably reaching a fever pitch in his living room. In the back of his mind, he can almost hear the roar of it. He increases the pressure to his finger tips.  

“Right,” Ren says. “File this away and never think about it again.”

Hux doesn’t look up from his scanning. The light from the desk lamp gives him Dracula-esque cheekbones.

Hux says, “You may not care about increasing profit margins, but I certainly do.”

Ren looks at Hux’s coffee mug.

“You work too hard,” is all Ren can think to say, because Hux looks pretty terrible. He’s never thought of Hux as really having a breaking point, but it’s clear this case has been hard on even Hux’s wrought-iron composure.  

“Someone had to pick up your slack while you were traipsing around the city. Or did you think we finished this job by accident?”

And there’s a kind of icy, resigned anger in his voice that surprises Ren. He leans forward, not sure if he’s going to argue with his second in command or apologize or _what_ , exactly. Then the landline starts to ring and both their heads snap up to the corner in the table where it has been gathering dust since they installed it.

The shrill noise fills him with a feeling of visceral dread. No one calls their landline. They have it blacklisted on every do-not-call list in existence. No one is supposed to be able to get ahold of them without having the direct line of a member of their group. And yet here it is, a leftover relic Hux insisted on installing in case of emergencies.  

Hux and Ren look at each other, then Hux reaches for the cordless phone and hands it wordlessly over, like it’s something distasteful.

The minute Ren hits the answer button, a riot of noise streams from the other end. The noise resolves itself into Finn’s voice, but that’s all he can interpret.

“ _I’vebeencallingandcallingbutyoudidn’tpickupyourphone,thenPoerememberedtheofficehasalandline-“_

“Slow the fuck down,” Ren says, pulling the phone away from his ear and reaching for his cell phone. He’d silenced it, but looking at it now he has ten missed calls from Finn and as many texts from Poe.

Finn doesn’t make him wait, and this time his words are fast, interpretable, and completely fucking gutting.

“Rey left. I guess Phasma asked her to fill in at the bar, and she agreed, and when I noticed she was gone and called her, and she told me not to tell you but I think she’s wrong-”

“Finn, shut up,” Ren says, needing everything to just go quiet for one fucking minute so he can process the first two words of Finn’s sentence and then maybe, _maybe_ go from there. Hux straightens slightly.

“Rey is at the Scavenger,” Ren reiterates. There’s a kind of static growing in the back of his mind. No thoughts, no feelings, just startled white noise.

Finn clears his throat, “Yeah She took the bus.”

“The _day_ after we submitted a damning report implicating the people trying to kill her?” Kylo says, and the words grind through his teeth as the static in his head swells.

Finn makes a strangled noise. “Yeah.”

Finn recovers his footing just as the noise reaches a breaking point in his head. Now it’s a full on roar, just a stream of ripping, tearing anger that has no direction, no point. It has to come out.

“Are you _fucking_ kidding me,” Ren snarls, standing so fast that his desk chair screams against the floor with a staccato whine of wood on tile. “Finn, what the absolute fuck-”

“I’m sure she’s fine, but she’s not answering her phone, and I’m worried-” Finn starts, and his voice is desperate.

“Didn’t you tell her to get her ass home?” Ren says, and he’s pacing around the room like a caged animal, feeling like he’s about seventeen again, full of energy and just completely powerless.

At the time it had felt like power to fuck shit up, and he’d thought he’d moved past that particular logical fallacy, but apparently fucking not, because he’s storming around like an asshole, half-wishing he was still that kid who broke shit when he got angry.  

“I can’t make Rey do anything, you know that,” Finn objects.

“She’s behaving like a fucking child,” Ren says, almost yelling into the phone, not caring that it’s not Finn’s fault. “I thought she understood-”

And he cuts off, because that was his big fucking mistake, wasn’t it? Assuming that Rey could throw off two decades of fucked up coping mechanisms over the span of fourteen days. Like he could just change things so completely she would just be someone else.

And then he feels like the biggest moron in the fucking world, because he can’t save Rey. Not when she’s hell bent on running off and without a thought for the enormous crater she leaves behind.

Finn’s voice is infuriatingly hesitant. “Are you going to go get her?”

“Where’s Poe?” Ren snaps, his eyes tracking to the door. Something of a plan comes to mind, and it is a tiny miracle to find that there is still something he can do besides sit here and rage at his utter powerlessness. He pats his pocket for his keys, and they bump into his hip bone with a satisfying, heavy impact.

“He’s here,” Finn says, his voice a little distant. Ren can hear people in the background. His people, once.

He’s already walking to the door.  

“Tell him to meet me at the bar. Tell him he’s leaving right now.”

Finn says, “What are you going to do?”

Ren has no fucking clue. He just hangs up.

X

It takes him ten miles before his thoughts move past choking anger, and then he’s almost out of the city. He’d hit some kind of insane traffic heading west from the office. Some police blockade thing that would have sent him into recon mode if this had been any other night.

Now, all the cop cars do is set his teeth on edge and make him rev his engine at the stoplight like he’s a goddamn speed junkie asshole.  When their line of traffic slowly moves past the jam, he guns it onto the 160. It’s not like speed is a concern. He’d seen just damn near every cop in the city stopped on the highway.

When he finally leaves the tinsel and concrete of Vegas behind him, the mountains move darkly past him like shadowy shapes against the sky.

With the drone of the city behind him and the open, dark road ahead, the world distills into three elements. There is the anger, the desert, and the asphalt underneath him.

Somewhere between the edge of Vegas and the start of the Red Stone National Preserve, the anger shuffles aside, not dimming or getting any smaller, but carving a new space in his head, making more room for these huge feelings to play themselves out. Into the new space comes the fear. Then the fear moves aside for the panic. The panic is a clawing, throaty pain in his chest that reminds him of the sound of Rey’s voicemail box tone.

It feels like he can’t get enough air.

Fuck, they’d _talked_ about this, about being honest with each other, and she’d looked at him with those big eyes and nodded her head like she understood what he meant when he said that he wanted her to tell him the truth about shit like this. Then the second she gets twitchy she sprints back to the one place she’s most at risk? It’s such bullshit.

Rey is a liar, Ren thinks blackly. _God_ , when he gets to her. They are going to have a fucking _conversation_ , and so help him she’s going to get it through her head that she can’t fucking head for the hills the second something gets good. It’s so textbook.

His anger starts fights for dominance with the panic, which is good. His anger is centering.  

He tries to imagine how it’s going to fucking go when he gets there. He accelerates into the blue gray line of highway 160. The desert around him is dark as all hell, and there’s a nonzero chance he’s going to have to swerve to avoid an animal on the road, but he doesn’t care.

The universe has a messed up sense of humor, so it would probably be a raccoon or some shit.

Two hills press close together at the bend of the road. If he wipes out on loose gravel, he’s going to be even more pissed than he was before. And possibly dead.

As he banks slightly into the curve and accelerates, the road opens onto an uninterrupted view of the very edge of the conservation area. He used to like this part of the drive. The huge sky and the wide open space after the confinement of the ravine. It meant he was almost to Rey.

Now, he could not feel further away from her.

The smell of something burning makes him slow down, thinking for a second that he must burning oil. His gaze doesn’t get further than the horizon, though. A stream of black smoke is rising into the sky, black and ugly and moving fast.

And then there is only one thing again.

* * *

_**Rey** _

When they show burning buildings in movies, they never get it quite right.

The hero always sees the fire, always backs away from it while shielding his eyes from the glare. The smoke is hazy, moving around like gusts of regular air, and it’s always grey like campfire smoke. The house takes a while to burn down.

That isn’t what it’s like.

When a building burns down, the smoke is almost always what kills you, burning off all the oxygen and replacing it with toxic fumes that scar your esophagus and damaging every soft tissue you have. The smoke and gas has an almost physical weight, and you can’t see anything through it.

The smoke creeping into the Scavenger from the kitchen is ink black and smells like burning plastic and simmering concrete.

The Scavenger burns fast and dirty.

The smoke moves like something in a painting of hell, streaming for the ceiling at the speed of water going over the Hoover Dam. It roars into the corners of the building in a mad hunt for something else to obliterate and finding no way out.

Something in the kitchen explodes, and a wall of heat slams into her. She staggers back, coughing over the roar of smoke. It takes a minute for her brain to catch up with her body, but by the time it finally does the smoke has reached the beams in the ceiling and everything is painfully obvious.

She shouldn't have come here, and if she makes it out of this alive then she is never, ever going to be this idiotic again. Phas, appearing behind her, puts a hand on her shoulder and tugs her away from the back door, yelling something right in Rey’s ear.

“I can’t find the fire extinguishers,” Phas yells, “Front door is chained shut, we need-”

Rey’s vision swims as a swell of smoke drives them both even further back. She stumbles past the bar, dodging the hip-height pool tables reflexively as they hack and cough in the sweet smelling air. The back of the bar is engulfed in flames and Rey’s thoughts are hammering against the side of her head, screaming at her to run, to get far, far away.

Rey turns, finds Phasma’s eyes. A grim understanding passes between them.

There are only two ways in and out of the Scavenger: the front entrance and the back staff door. There are the two doors and no sprinklers or fire extinguishers, and the back door is engulfed in flames.

_No way out but through._

Phas grips her shoulders, maybe sensing Rey’s building panic.

“We’re not gonna die in this shithole,” Phasma yells over the din of the fire, her voice clear as her brow beads with sweat.

Rey can only nod. They make for the doors.

The doors open inward, which Rey already knows means bad things for them. A strong kick can break down a door that opens away from you. But then, they aren’t locked in. They’re _chained_ in, and how fucked up is that?

The doors are definitely not up to fire code, which had been awesome for them when they needed to keep the mob of people away from the parking lot. Now that they’re trapped inside without automatic fire doors to prevent this exact sort of thing, Rey’s developing a new appreciation for the fire marshal.

Phas is leveraging her whole body into tugging at the doors, trying in vain to loosen the chain enough to get an arm through. They make a movie-score clanking noise as Phas yanks on the handles, like whoever chained them from the outside just looped the metal around the handles. Rey grabs a handle too and they yank and _strain_ , praying that enough tension will loosen whatever knot has tied their door shut.

“It’s old wood, if we tug hard enough the handles might break,” Phas is shouting, but it’s getting harder and harder to hear her over the roar of the fire. Rey glances behind her, the smoke and heat starting to make her light headed.

It’s hot and dark, and in the distance she can hear the scream of melting plastic as the resin coating the bar and the linoleum on the floor starts to boil _._

She pays attention to this in an abstract way as her body, tiring under the heat and the fumes, weakens with each tug. Rey upends a napkin roll on a nearby table and sends the hot metal utensils clattering onto the rapidly blackening table top. Her hands trembling, she wets the napkin with some leftover beer and presses the damp paper across her mouth. It smells like smoke and beer, but it’s this or dying of smoke inhalation.

She knows enough about this sort of thing to be sure that this stands a pretty huge chance of killing her.

She knows this the way she knows that the wooden beams framing the interior, dried out from _years_ of desert dehydration, will catch like matchsticks within minutes of exposure to the flames. What little water is trapped in the cinder blocks will start to boil, expanding just enough that any flaws in the concrete will expand. Will snap.

The whole damn building will collapse around them, because she’d been too fucking stupid to know when she should keep her head down.

Plutt probably used gasoline to light the kitchen up so quickly. But then, Plutt would never get his hands this dirty. It was probably some poor kid who will spend the rest of his life thinking about what he did. Rey can relate.

Rey closes her eyes, feeling the air in her lungs slowly, slowly start to burn her from the inside out.

It doesn’t matter. It doesn’t, because no matter how hard they tug, the doors do not give.

_Think. Think._

Rey has broken into and out of buildings a handful of times. Plutt never counted locked doors as a good enough excuse to miss a payment, so back in the day she’d shimmied open a few windows, broken some hasps, taken apart locks-

The idea hits her just as the smoke behind them takes on a new sound. She thinks it’s the sound of pool balls exploding.

Rey whirls around and lunges for silverware she’d just dumped out, clutching the flat knife from the set. Gripping it in one hand, Rey leans down on her way and picks up Phasma’s baseball bat.

“That’s not going to help,” Phas says, covering her mouth with her sleeve. Rey tosses Phasma a napkin for her mouth and goes for the hinges.

_There’s more than one way to open a door, Rey girl._

Door hinges are like little metal books, with the front cover screwed into the wall and the back cover screwed into the door itself. At the spine of the book is a metal pin that connects the interlocking grooves of the front and back plates, and if you pull that pin out, the two parts separate. Controlled application of force can loosen the pin without power tools the way you can pry a nail out of a board of wood by getting something sturdy underneath it and lifting.

Rey doesn’t have a hammer, but she does have a butter knife and Phasma’s emergency baseball bat. It will have to do. She gets the knife under one of the pins, holding it there on shaking fingers, and lines up the baseball bat like she’s getting ready to hammer an enormous nail. For one second, she lets herself imagine it’s Plutt’s head.

The end of the baseball bat hits the back of the knife and sends a shock of vibration down Rey’s hands to the point of connection between the knife and the pin. The impact drives the pin into the air, and Rey lets out a muted prayer of thanks as the pin wiggles loose from the joint.

She hits the knife with the bat again and again, driving the pin from between the clenched fist of the door hinge. As the smoke at their back starts to make Rey’s clothes feel too hot on her skin, all she can think about is something she heard in grade school.

Door hinge is the only thing that rhymes with orange. Which isn’t even _true._

Phas catches on to what she’s doing, and they crowd their bodies together as she uses her height to get at the hinge at the top of the frame. There are three hinges on this door, and Rey’s eyes start to swim as she finally, finally tugs the pin out from the bottom middle. She moves to the second one. The metal is so hot that it sears her fingertips.

Behind them, the world is a smoky void. The darkness has consumed the kitchen, the bar, half the pool tables. She still hasn’t seen actual flames yet. Maybe two minutes have passed since she’d hung up the phone.

Phas has the top one nearly free when they both hear the sound of something else explode behind them. Another of those oxygen stealing bursts of air send the two women to their hands and knees, coughing and choking on air that is being burned off and replaced with carbon dioxide. They crawl for the gap between the doors, drawing in gasps of fresh air that isn’t enough. Her throat is burning. Everything is _burning._

Through her streaming eyes, Rey imagines that she can see the stars.

“It’s almost loose,” Rey rasps, but it feels like there’s a burning coal in her throat.

“Get up,” Phas says, climbing to her feet with her mouth pressed to the gap, and-

There’s another hideous crashing noise above, and Rey knows exactly what will happen. Creosote beams are architectural. They’re also highly flammable. They will be the first thing to fall when the structure finally catches.

Rey grabs Phasma’s hand as the lengthwise beam supporting the Scavenger Bar and Grill bursts into violent, glittering flame. Smoke and flame war for dominance, and the air somehow both opaque and glowing. The impact of the light and the heat energy sends them both back down on the floor, rolling away and shielding their eyes from light so bright it hurts.

Beside her on the floor, Phasma isn’t moving.

She crawls.

_I will not die here. I will not die here._

The bottom hinge is the last one, and she’s stumbling to her knees to reach for it, her brain cloudy and everything smokey and orange and black and so hot, so fucking _hot_. Middle of the desert in August at high noon hot.

Kill you hot.

She grabs her fingers around the pin. Ignores the pain. She tugs at it. Pulls. There’s a tool she’s supposed to be using, but she can’t force her thoughts into order. She yanks and tugs as her legs tremble and her vision goes spotty. At this point, the disconnect is almost a relief.

Metal clangs to the floor as the pin comes loose. It rolls away and is consumed by smoke, but the door doesn’t move. All three pins are free but the door doesn’t move.

Her breaths are coming shallow now as nausea starts to roil in her stomach. She throws a hand out to catch herself as she falls but doesn’t even feel the impact as she hits the ground.

Rey rolls onto her back, watching the flames overhead as they consume the support beam. She hadn’t gotten a chance to see it fall, last time. She’d been just a few seconds too late.

This time, though. This time she sees it.

It looks like the sun being swallowed by the blackness of space. It looks like a valley of fire cutting through dense, volcanic rock. She tries to think how she’d describe it to Kylo. He would like to see the sun like this, so close to the ground. Big and bright.

 _Orange_. _Door hinge_.

There’s something else she’s supposed to do. The next step.

Pins, hinges, Flagstaff, Maricopa.

Birthday candles.

A warm hand on hers.

It comes limping back to her, half formed and screaming in her mind. The door. The way out.

The effort it takes to lift her foot and kick the door frame is _embarrassing_ , but there’s just no air anymore. Her brain feels like a balloon, and she just wants to sleep _._ Her foot makes contact and the door moves, an inch. She kicks it again, coughing up smoke and ash.  There’s groan of metal as the door, loosened from its frame, pushes forward into the night as the pressure from the room explodes into the sky.

Rey tries to scream as heat sears across her body as she lays two feet from the end of the world. The fire bellows her name.

Death looks like Kylo Ren slipping his his arms around her, lifting her off the ground and dragging her through the open door into the air outside.

When Rey gasps her first real breath, the scream finally, finally comes.

It’s silent. It hurts. It won’t stop, like all the hot air is slipping up her throat and letting itself out in vaporous, painful gasp. She only stops to draw in panicked, shallow breaths as he carries her, limp and about to throw up, across the gravel.

Poe is dragging an unconscious Phasma behind him, his eyes focused and narrow as he lifts Phasma up so her arm is over his shoulder. He says something to Ren and then they’re stumbling away from the building.

The structure is bleeding smoke into the air, the black flames stretching two stories into the sky. Over Ren’s shoulder, Rey watches as the cinder block structure gives way and falls. It goes inward first, and then passionately, explosively outward.

Then Kylo Ren’s body obliterates the sky as he throws them both onto the ground, his body covering hers as a rain of concrete and debris comes showering down overhead. Rey’s head reels. She closes her eyes, but it makes no difference. His body takes up the whole sky, and she can’t breathe through the leather of his jacket and everything fucking hurts and-

“Rey,” Kylo is saying, but she only registers it on a distant level, amazed that she is still alive. The air she’s breathing smells like desert sand and scrub and dirt and she’s holy shit she is _alive_.

His arms are tight around her, and the stars above her go whooshing to one side as her perspective shifts as he sits them both up. She loses track of the horizon. She’s pressed against his chest, his arms around her as they huddle in the gravel.

“Jesus christ, Rey, I was so fucking scared,” he’s saying, but she’s so close to throwing up that she can’t even interpret his tone of voice. She buries her face into his shoulder, gasping for air and pressing her face against the solidity of him.

How is it possible that she feels worse now that she’s out of the fire? Her head aches like something has crawled into it and died, and it feels like her entire body is overheating and singed.

It hurts.

She hurts.

“Rey, talk to me,” he says, and this time she picks out the fear in his voice. The panic.

“Plutt-“ Rey starts. And stops as a fit of coughing wracks through her body. It nearly doubles her over, and her throat feels like sandpaper. When it finally stops, her teeth start to chatter, which is so unfair because she’s nearly been burnt to death.

“What the actual fuck were you thinking?” He says, but his voice is low and relieved as he presses kiss after kiss into her smoky hair. “Running off like that without fucking telling me-”

“I know,” she murmurs, and she tilts her face back and gets a view of the smoke obliterating the stars overhead.

Rey’s hands go to his leather jacket and knot there, her fingers raw. She forces the air into her lungs again and again, drawing in deep lungfuls as the nausea starts to pass.

Poe, looking restless and agitated, jogs up to where they’re huddled together on the ground. He kneels down.

“Phas is okay,” Poe says. “Burned, but she’ll live. Every emergency responder in the county is probably on their way.”

Rey’s eyes snap open to look over at where Phas is laying on the ground, face up to the smokey sky. Shit.

Ren’s arms go tighter around her. “Christ.”

Poe manages a thin smile. “You sure keep us on our toes.”

“I’m gonna kill him,” she whispers, wishing she had a bit more lung power to shout the words into the sky. It would feel good to fall to her knees and curse the heavens. At the moment, it’s about all she can do to let Kylo hold her.

And he does hold her. Tight and strong and not too hard.

Ren exhales heavily. “Rey. You need a fucking doctor.”

“He tried to kill me. I won’t let-” Rey’s snarl is a wheeze of air.

She leans back, lifting her head from the warm leather of his shoulder. His eyes are wary, and there’s a leashed anger there that she knows means trouble.

“So go to a fucking doctor,” he says, ice cold. “Revenge won't heal burns.”

Rey squirms in his arms. “Think I don’t know that?”

“He’s playing you, and you’re letting him,” Ren says. “You’d be dead if I hadn’t come out here.”

Rey leans back, startled by his words. And angry.

“He’ll get _away_ with it,” Rey says, and this time she finally manages to slip some grit into her voice. It feels damn good.

His eyes are hard. “What’s your fucking plan here, Rey? You kill him and then what? It isn’t going to make you feel better. It’s going to make it worse.”

“You don’t know that.”

“I thought you were dead, Rey. I’m not interested in indulging your self-destructive vendetta-”

She shoves him. Hard. He lets out a startled breath and Rey goes scrabbling back out of his arms. The dirt of the Scavenger’s parking lot is gritty against the tender flesh of her thighs, but he lets her crawl away from him, his eyes trained on her face.

When he doesn’t grab her ankle and drag her back, she’s almost disappointed. And how fucked up is that, really?

“I have to go. I have to get him. I can’t stay here,” Rey says, almost pleading even though it doesn’t matter. She’ll get him tonight whether or not Kylo fucking likes it.

His jaw works and he looks like he wants to break something or bust into tears or howl at the moon. The dark shadows on his jaw could be smoke or they could be stubble, but either way he needs a to shower. Fuck knows what she looks like.

“I’d give you _anything_ else,” he grits, eyes narrowed in a warning. But that isn’t true. Kylo doesn’t do favors for free. Nobody does.

Rey leans forward. “Help me with this one thing, and I’ll do whatever you want. I’ll live with you, I’ll get a normal job, I’ll be nice-”

It is the wrong thing to say. He looks as angry as she’s ever seen him.

“Jesus Christ,” he snarls, holding himself in a tense crouch on the ground. “Is that what you think I want? You think I want to lock you up? I want to have a life with you, not hold your fucking leash.”

Rey frowns, bewildered. “I thought you wanted me.”

He looks back, nostrils flaring. “I _wanted_ you to tell me what was on your fucking mind. So we could work together to fix this. I never wanted to control you. Why the hell didn’t you tell me how bad it was getting?”

Rey’s head reels. “I thought you’d be angry.”

“I am angry,” he snaps, leaning forward. “I had to drag you out from a burning building because you felt, what, pent up laying low while people were trying to kill you?”

Rey bites her lip, stifling a retort. He’s not done.

“You want to know what it felt like when I saw you in there, curled up and unmoving? I thought you were dead, Rey.” He looks away, scowling. “And all I could think about was how pissed off I was that I never told you I loved you.”

The gravel under her sneakers makes a crunching noise as Rey’s sneaker slides through the gravel. She just stares at him, still sprawled back on the dirt, stunned.

“You love me?”

His face twists and he looks up at the sky. “I wanted… I was going to wait. I didn’t want to...freak you out.”

All Rey feels is a kind of strangled shock. And joy. Followed by immediate, toe-curling fear. There’s no way he loves her, because if he loves her now before she fixes everything, before she deserves it, what does that say about... everything? That she was fine all along? That none of this was necessary? 

Kylo never lies to her.

She looks into his eyes. “Kylo, please.”

“Please, what?”

Rey bites a lip. “Please help me with this.”

He squares his shoulders. “And then what?”

“I don’t know,” she admits, hating herself for how it must sound to him. Pointless and vindictive and painful. If she gives in right now, the dream of finally getting clean and safe and far away will die with it, because Plutt will always be in her head, always lurking in a shadow, always cutting her off from the things she wants.

Inhaling, she looks at him hard. There could be room for two goals. For an additional stop on the map. But she can’t make a promise.

He asked her not to lie.

She reaches for his hand with clumsy fingers and twines his hand in hers. When he doesn’t tug her to his side, she inches forward on her own, god damn it. Is it still a lie if you don’t use words?

She buries her face in his side and his arms go around her and then they’re both just sitting there in front of the shell of a building. Nothing about this is good. Nothing is right or resolved, but he holds her anyway, and she's so sorry she can barely speak. 

"Sorry," she rasps. And his hands kind of tighten and he doesn't say he forgives her. 

“Okay,” he murmurs. She’s so close to crying now that she has to dig her fingers in the dirt to distract herself. There isn’t time for crying. She can do that later, once all this is over. Once she’s free.

And she will be. She’ll be free and she’ll make this up to him.

His hand covers hers, pressing it flat, letting the sharp gravel fall like sand through her fingers.

Poe’s voice cuts into the moment.

“Guys. Save this for later.”

She gets to her feet, not looking at Kylo, and stumbles the few feet over to Phasma. She cracks her eyes open when Rey comes to kneel beside her. Poe, standing next to them, scans the road for any sign of trouble.

“You okay?” Rey whispers. She can feel Kylo’s gaze on her neck.  

Phas exhales in the faintest suggestion of mirth. “Not really. Need to get checked out. I was unconscious for a while, wasn’t I?”

Rey nods. “Yeah. And the bar is... “

Phas scrunches up her face. “Doesn’t matter. Not important.”

Rey blinks. “It’s not?”

“I’m alive and I have insurance. Everything else is negotiable,” she rasps, as she starts to cough again. Rey reaches for her hand. It’s burned on the tips like hers.

“Phas, I’m…” Rey starts, and trails off. It’s not her fault someone lit the bar on fire. It’s not. Rey’s fingers, twined in Phasma’s, are as dirty as they’ve always been.

Rey closes her eyes. “I’m so sorry.”

With his usual panther prowl, Kylo walks up quietly behind them. He puts a hand on Rey’s shoulder. She opens her eyes again.

“Time to go,” he says, and his tone is so controlled that it’s almost terrifying.

Rey looks up at him, stricken by guilt.

“Not yet. She’s hurt.”

“So are you,” he counters.  

Poe says, “I’m fine, not that anyone asked.”

“Just get out of here,” Phas interjects. “I’ll tell them you left before the fire started.”

“Phas,” Rey objects.

Phas lifts her free hand in the air and waves it limply against the sky. “You'll make it more complicated. Go take care of your shit, Rey.”

Rey inhales. She nods and gets to her feet, gripping Kylo’s thigh for support as she establishes that her legs aren’t going to give out from underneath her. Upright, Rey leaves her hand on Ren as she turns and looks at the bar. It looks like what it is. Rubble.

She turns to Kylo, her mind flitting onto the next thing. The next step. She pictures Plutt’s face as she’s seen it so many times, bloated and laughing. Her anger comes back, a drum beat keeping time in her head.

“Okay,” she says, dropping her hand. “I’m ready.”

He nods, and they  walk together to his bike.

She wraps her arms around his chest and presses herself flat against his back, he revs the engine and grips her hand for a moment. Then he kicks the engine into gear. Rey watches the gravel fly into the air, closes her eyes, and leans into him.  The gravel gives way to smooth pavement, and then they are accelerating with breathtaking speed away from the bar.

Rey looks over Ren’s shoulder. Vegas is a thousand incandescent light bulbs on the horizon, glittering like a neon sunrise in the dead of night. Kylo’s hip holster presses into her thigh. Her fingers find the cool metal of her switchblade.

She almost smiles.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> _*distant authorial screeching noises*_  
>  Huge ups to a few people for their assists on this chapter. As always, [Amy "fantastic attention to detail and realism and giver of life" Zini](https://archiveofourown.org/users/amyzini) for her beta skills and general patience with my shenanigans. Also thanks to [lifeofsnark](https://archiveofourown.org/users/lifeofsnark) for her encouragement and impressions. (She has fics! Go read them!) 
> 
> Memes shared and questions answered on [my Tumblr!](https://violetwilson.tumblr.com/)
> 
> Some neat things that came out of the last chapter!  
> This [incredible moodboard](https://violetwilson.tumblr.com/post/171842215107/laribernardi-lets-go-home-together-lets-go) by [LariBernardi!](http://laribernardi.tumblr.com/)  
> And this [insane piece of art](https://violetwilson.tumblr.com/post/171729935062/only-if-you-want-to-personal-security-expert-and%20) by the ultimate OG, [PaulatheProkaryote.](http://paulatheprokaryote.tumblr.com/)


	18. Life Itself

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Suggested listening: [Get Free](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yzP4kQhlPBY) by Lana Del Rey, which is maybe Rey's anthem.

They stand together on the concrete outside the old gaming hall, the street lights behind them sending out a static buzz of noise with the yellow light on the pavement. Ren has one hand on the holster of his gun and the other gripping the handle of his bike with white knuckles.

Rey shuffles her weight between her feet. Then she coughs, and the cough goes on long enough that Ren finally abandons his silent sentry behind her to put a hand on her back, his fingers stroking the top of her neck.

When the coughs finally subside enough for her to gasp a quick breath, Rey wipes some dirt off her cheek, careful of the tender pink skin on her face and hands.

“Doctor after,” she rasps, turning around to look up at Kylo. “I promise.”

His mouth is a hard line, like maybe he doesn’t believe her anymore. Rey inhales shakily and feels the regret mixing in with everything else in her body. She feels kind of sick.  

She _hates_ Unkar Plutt.

“The plan,” Rey says, wanting to tell him this, to give him a heads up. That’s what got her into trouble last time, but she has to try to do better.

Rey grits her teeth, because she knows exactly what the plan is.

“The plan is that I’m gonna end this,” Rey says flatly.

He looks from her to the building behind them.

“How?” he says, and his voice is soft. He’s just staring at her like she’s someone he doesn’t even know, and this would be so, so much easier if he would just yell at her. She would know what to do with that.

“I’ll burn his supply,” Rey says. “So he can’t hurt anyone else.”

Kylo nods once. “And if he’s not in there?”

“Then I’ll call it for the night and go to a doctor.”

He nods again, even slower this time. But his eyes come back to her and they are fractionally less icy.

“Okay.”

Rey can feel every pebble under the thin soles of her shoes. How many times has she stood here like this? Right on the threshold, dreading going in but more than that, dreading coming back out a slightly less whole person than she’d been before? Leaving with a little less joy in her pocket?

If she’s honest, she’d imagined coming here with him before, bursting in with Kylo at her back.

But here, now in her actual real life, Kylo’s eyes are professional and his coolness is a comfort. His scans the area, taking in the power lines connecting the store room to the Las Vegas power grid, the dumpster full of shredded paper and ripped plastic, the glass bottles in pieces under their feet.

_I can do this. I know how to do this._

“Hey. Do I need to worry about you?” Rey says, smiling a little. It’s the kind of thing he would usually say to her, and she expects him to give her that half smile. But he doesn’t. His eyes are flat black pools, and in the slanting light he looks sharp and angular, like he’s aged a few years overnight. Strong, relentless Kylo is _tired_ , and she’s the reason. Her smile fades.

“Honestly?” He says. “Probably.”

Rey draws in a breath and the air in her windpipe feels like sand against her windpipe. Even at night, even in the dead of winter, Vegas air has a kind of gritty, dusty heat taste to it, like the desert was in the air.

“Okay,” Rey says. “Let me go first.”

He makes no move to take control of the situation, and she doesn’t ask him to. This is her fight, after all. The least she can do is her own dirty work.

She turns, her fingers pressing on either side of the thick key that opens the back door. Her mind is on the next thing, the next move. The stack of plastic-wrapped cocaine bricks that usually pollute the cinderblock filtered air in the back of this store room. She’s going to torch it, and then she’s going to kill Unkar Plutt with his own gun.

One last goddamn job.

“Rey,” Ren says, and she stops, glancing back. He’s backlit by one of those orange fluorescent security lights, and looks so good. So sharp and keen and right here, right now. He crosses to her, one hand coming up to cup her face with both hands. Something in her is saying, _we don’t have time for this,_ but the other part, the bigger one, says that she can’t afford to waste even a second.

He kisses her, and his mouth on hers is gentle at first. But she can feel the leashed energy, can feel his fingers trembling on her face and his hips pressing into hers. She opens her mouth and his teeth catch on the side of her lip and she feels the friction shudder through her.

He lets her go and takes a step back, his eyes cool again.

“You want my gun?”

Rey turns. “I don’t need it.”

She pulls the door open and plunges into the darkness.

X

She’s conscious of the smell first. It’s dark, and the chalky, faintly chemical-sweet smell of cocaine mixing with the odor of unwashed bodies and weed. It’s foul and familiar.

The store room is empty.

Behind her, Ren stands in the doorway, letting a long shaft of alley light into the room, illuminating only a few stretched out pieces of abandoned plastic wrap littering the concrete floor.

Rey flicks the switch, but nothing happens.

“It’s gone,” Rey whispers, as a cold kind of dread fills her. There’s only one reason the product would be gone.

Rey stumbles forward, the half-melted soles of her shoes squeaking on the floor.

If he’s cleaned house and moved shop, she’s never going to have peace, will never be able to move on. Ren curses, hot on her heels as she wrenches the door open and stumbles into the carpeted, low-ceilinged shop front with the ratty loveseat and the flickering fluorescent lights. At least, that’s what it used to look like.

Tonight, it is empty, all the drifters have fled, leaving only beer cans and shitty memories behind. Rey turns around, her desperation a physical weight in her body. She turns to Kylo, like he can somehow _do_ something about this.

“He’s gone,” she says. Kylo lets out a long breath and she meets his gaze for a few heartbeats. Then, his jaw working, he shakes his head and points to the corner.

And there he is. Unkar Plutt, nearly unrecognizable in his stained shirt, passed out cold with his head lolling to one side. He looks nearly dead, so pale he’s almost blue, and puffy and bloated like a rotting fish. It’s as bad as Rey’s ever seen him, and she doesn’t have to look for the pills to know immediately what’s happening here.

Looking at him slumped over, unmoving, his business gone, all she feels is fury. Fury that he did all of this to all of them, because this whole time he was just as sick, just as tormented as she was, and now he’s about to die from a goddamn overdose before she gets the one thing she ever really, truly needed from him?

In kinder moments, Rey thinks it’s unfair that pain meds were the things that ended up ruining his life.

This isn’t one of the kinder moments.

She slips her blade out of her pocket, just holding the metal casing with the blade sheathed. It’s heavy, like always. It went through the fire with her, but if she hadn’t made it out, it would have survived the heat for someone else to use. Tempered by the fire. Kylo wouldn’t ever give her a weapon that couldn’t keep up with her.

She coughs again, and it’s starting to _really_ hurt. When the hacking stops, she draws in a few shuddering breaths.

Kylo’s voice is quiet in her ear. “Rey. Think this through.”

She shoves him back and strides forward, her anger giving her speed and her adrenaline masking the pain in her extremities. Plutt swells in her vision, his chest rising and falling, his lids twitching. He doesn’t move, doesn’t react at all.

“Wake up,” she says, wanting so badly, _so_ badly for him to see her descending on him like a goddamn phoenix.

She closes the distance and comes to a stop a few feet away from him, in her usual spot just out of arm’s reach. Just far enough away to give her time to react if he makes an unpredictable move.

Old habits die really, really hard.

She remembers again how physical her anger is. How her limbs go stringy and taut, how it sounds like roaring water and a hundred drums beating in her aching head.

Even two weeks away from this place has given her perspective, showing her the recesses and pits of her life in a way she’d never been able to clearly see. This job had always just been a thing she had to do to be free, but now she sees it clearly. This man steals her joy with every inhale. Her anger gives her strength, and she turns back to Plutt, clenching her burnt fingertips against her palms to ground herself in the pain of it. The physical reality.

The audacity, the sheer frustration that he would try and kill her and then pass the fuck out, is what finally gives her the courage to take two steps forward. Kylo is _right_ there, a second shadow with a hand on the gun strapped to his hip.

“Wake up,” she repeats, and his fingers twitch but he doesn’t sit up. Her own palms tremble at her side, she’s nearly vibrating she’s so fucking angry. Up close like this, she can see the faint blue tint on his nose and cheeks. His blood vessels have constricted in his extremities, prioritizing circulation in the core organs which have been slowly failing him for _years._ He’s a great hulking machine crumbling before her eyes.

“Wake _up_ ,” Rey says, louder this time.

Plutt’s breaths are coming in maddeningly persistent little starts and stops, a rasping, ceaseless beat. She feels like she’s trapped in a short story, that one with the telltale heart and a man bricked up behind the wall.

Rey kneels before the man who has stolen her joy all her life.  

“I survived. You failed.” Her voice is walking the thin ass line between bursting into tears and screaming her head off. “You were the one who taught me to how to strip a door.”

Rey repeats, so close to his face now that she doesn’t have to shout. She lifts a hand up, raising it over her head like she’s going to slap him. The gesture means nothing to the unconscious man in front of her, and she lets it fall limp at her side. It doesn’t give her what she wants.

She wants badly to look back at Ren, but she’s not sure she can handle seeing the expression on his face.

Rey forces a deep breath, wincing a little at the pain in her throat. In protest, her body sends her a wrack of coughs, the sudden influx of air agitating the sensitive tissue. She coughs and coughs, one arm across her mouth and turned to one side the way she’s learning is polite. Ren puts a hand on her upper back, and his touch is warm and but not soothing. Nothing feels soothing. Everything feels ragged and worked over, and his hand on her skin feels almost hot and almost painful.

She turns back to Plutt. His eyelids are twitching, which could be the drugs, honestly, but she’s going to assume he’s waking up.

When he finally speaks, his voice sounds like it’s coming from underwater, wet and garbled.

What he says is, “ _Rey._ ”

Something in her chest starts to roar, and it’s hot, like the fire has gotten into her veins and is feeding on something inside her.

“I’m right here, I’m alive, you asshole. You failed,” she hisses.

His eyes open. Kylo takes a step closer.

Plutt blinks, unfocused and slurring. “I have a job for her.”

Her hands dig into the ratty carpet.

“I’m _here._ ”

“She’s hiding,” Plutt drones, his voice ceaseless and wet and- “I need someone to find her.”

“You tried to kill me. My whole life, you...” she says, her voice hitching.

Kylo makes a strangled noise, but Plutt’s head lolls back, his pupils just pinpricks against the startling blue of his eyes.

“Get her,” he rasps, looking into the middle distance overhead, seeing nothing, expressing nothing. He look almost rapturous, like he’s caught in a dream. He says her name again. And again.

“Look, I’m here, I’m right-” she says, and it turns into a plea halfway through. When her anger leaves her, it goes out like a great tide returning to the surf, leaving only the half-decomposed skeleton of her grief on the sand. She bites the inside of her cheek, waiting for this pain to stop, but it doesn't stop, it  _swells._

“I’m here,” she whispers, her voice thick. Tentatively, she reaches for his hand. His fingers are like ice in hers.

This wasn’t the plan. She was banking on a confrontation, a final stance that would either kill her or set her free, but this…this isn’t what she wanted.

Plutt’s eyes close, and he looks helpless and pathetic, and fuck all, she _hates_ him. But she’s sad. She hasn’t forgiven him, and she might not ever. All that, and for what? He had nothing to give her then, and he has nothing for her now. There’s nothing for her here.

Kylo sounds like he’s in physical pain. “Put pressure between his thumb and index finger.”

But she doesn’t. She can’t.

Rey knows a lot about overdosing.

Plutt’s pulse is ticking erratically in the bulging vein in his neck, and his breaths are still that same maddeningly slow in and out, in and out, rasping and wet.

She heard Oxy’s not a bad way to go.

Beats being burned alive.

“Tell me I can leave him,” Rey whispers.

Kylo kneels down next to her, and she hears something under his boot snap and break.

“You can leave him. You don’t owe him anything.”

“I’d finally be better than him,” she says, almost reverently.  

“You were always better than him.”

The conviction in his voice almost makes her knees buckle. Because, fuck, he’s right. He’s fucking right. She’s better than this, she’s better than him, and it doesn’t matter that she could just as easily been the one on the couch. She didn’t take that path, and she gets to take credit for that. Gets to have it.

“Can I use your phone?” Rey says, fighting to keep her voice steady. 

Kylo says, “Leave him, just leave him.”

She narrows her eyes at him. “And just, what, let it go?”

“No, let it _die_ ,” he says, his expression feral and desperate as he turns her by the arm to look up into his eyes.

“My fight. You promised,” she says, not giving an inch.

His jaw works. “Rey.”

“You keep your promises.”

And he looks so annoyed, so genuinely pissed off that she could almost smile. 

“We’ll find a payphone a few miles away,” he concedes. 

She can live with that.

Rey nods, and then leans toward him to press a trembling finger on Plutt's pulse. It throbs, as irregular as his breathing, but there. She finds the tender spot between his thumb and forefinger and squeezes down as hard as she physically can.

It feels good when his eyes open, pinpricked pupils struggling to focus and a gasp of a breath passing his lips 

“I’m leaving,” Rey says, her voice faltering. “I’m leaving you, and I want you to watch.”

His mouth forms the shape of her name, but no noise comes out. She gets to her feet, swallowing hard. She doesn’t know if he watches her go, because for once in her god damn life, she does not look back.

X

It takes them a couple tries before they find a gas station with a payphone, but eventually they do. Rey’s feet feel like they’re made of lead as she walks up to the metal box on the side of a dimly lit Super America. A fluorescent bulb overhead flickers, and Rey’s shadow dances behind her.

Kylo leans against the wall, his hands in his pockets as he scans the road behind them, body tense. Rey clears her throat, one hand on the receiver. She fumbles in her pocket for change, but Kylo shakes his head.

He says, “911’s free on payphones. Federal law.”

“I didn’t know that.”

Ren swallows. “Yeah. I guess you wouldn’t.”

Rey turns her head to cough into her arm, and she coughs so long this time that she has to lean on the metal payphone for support. When the coughs finally subside, Kylo has his hand on her back and she is gasping for breath.

“Finish this. You need a fucking doctor,” he says.

“Yeah,” she mutters. She dials the number, and sure enough, it connects. There’s a brief, tense wait while she’s connected with an operator. And then with a click, a crisp female voice fills her ear.

“911, what is your emergency?”

She remembers what Kylo had told her to say and tries to copy the exact way he’d said it.

“I’d like to request a welfare check.”

“What is the address of the person you’re concerned about?”

Rey takes a deep breath, her eyes flicking to Kylo. He doesn’t nod or smile or frown or do anything, he just waits.

She clears her throat, and then she just blurts out the innocuous sounding address of the building she just left behind for good. A weight slides off her shoulders. It doesn’t lift, doesn’t go away, but settles into the pit of her stomach. Which feels, if not better, at least different.  

“What is the name of the person in question?”

Rey tries to open her mouth. Tries to say the answer. It sticks in her throat.

“I- I don’t know. He’s- look, it’s an oxycodone overdose, you should bring Narcan.”

“Are you able to meet officers at the scene?”

This one is easy.

“No.”

“Is anyone else with the victim?”

“No, he’s-”

_Alone._

She hangs up.

Rey blinks a few times just to clear her head. It's like, now that the conversation is over and the deed is really, all the way done, her adrenaline has abandoned her.

She turns around and looks at the great spread of the city. It doesn't matter that she can only see the street in front of her and the cement block walls of the strip malls, gas stations, and truck stops that populate this block. It doesn't matter that it's a dark, starless night. Rey feels like she could see forever without ever getting a grip on the cardinal directions. North could be right at her feet and she would have no idea.

She turns her gaze to Kylo, standing sentry at her side, and opens her mouth to say something.

But nothing, absolutely _nothing_ comes out.

He helps her.

"You did right by him," he says, low and serious. His hands are in his pockets and she can see dark shadows under his eyes.

Of course, she has to ask him.

"Do you think he's alive?"

"Your guess is as good as mine at this point."

Rey looks back at the street and tries to decide what she'd like better.

Cool air blows from the east, buffeting across miles and miles of scrubland and suburbs. Rey imagines it moving fast and raw across the Grand Canyon, skimming across rocks, across fallen boulders, across bleached skeletons and burnt down buildings until it arrives right here at her feet.

She closes her eyes and feels the slow, relentless movement of the earth underneath her, and the answer comes to her, clear and strong and certain. It’s like a beacon of light.

It’s enough. Or maybe it’s not. Either way, she can live with it.  

X

The doctor is willowy and tall, with big, empathetic eyes. She introduces herself as Dr. Holdo, and she is gently scolding Rey waiting so long to get medical attention.

Rey is sitting on a crinkly piece of paper with a cannula in her nose, the feeling of pure oxygen mainlining down her throat. Rey has to grip the side of the exam table to stop herself from losing her shit. She’s taken off her jacket, and her exposed shoulders are cold, and she is so bracingly, familiarly uncomfortable.

The doctor is explaining that she wants to send a tube with a camera down her airway to assess damage, and Rey has to stop herself from laughing out loud when she tells Rey that the tube will suction off any “secretions or debris.”

She nods her head at Rey’s expression. “Smoke inhalation kills people, Rey. You need to let us examine you so you don’t have permanent scarring.”

“Right,” Rey sighs, rubbing her neck. “Okay.”

Holdo types something into the computer. “Pretty sparse medical record you’ve got here. When was the last time you had a physical?”

Rey forces herself not to sound defensive. “It’s been a while.”

Holdo looks up from her computer, her eyes assessing.

All she says is, “You’re lucky to be alive.”

Rey leans her head back on the cool wall behind and flicks her eyes to the corner. Kylo is standing there, his mouth set in a hard line. When their eyes meet, he lifts his chin just slightly.

The doctor looks to Kylo, too. 

Politely, but firmly, she says, “Sir, would you please step into the hall?”

Kylo looks to Rey. Rey nods. He goes without a word.

Alone, Rey turns back to the doctor, whose eyes are focused in on the small burns dotting her arms. The ones from so long ago. Rey’s head swims, feeling the past and the present colliding with each other. 

The doctor’s voice is calm and level. “Is that man your boyfriend?”

Rey knots her fingers together, because what the hell is the answer to that question anymore? They haven’t talked about this. She’s not ready for this to be happening. For the after. A cold sort of dread is filling her up, like after the fire there is only ice.

“Yeah,” Rey says.  

She will not cry. She will _not._

Holdo nods, her eyes flicking to the little burns again. “And tell me, Rey, how are things going at home? Are your stress levels okay?”

Rey understands immediately what she means. Nice, clinical Doctor Holdo thinks that Kylo Ren has been hurting her, and she’s just skirting around the question because that’s the only way Rey lets anyone get their questions answered.

Now she really does want to laugh, because of all the absurd concepts in the world, now she has to deal with _this_ one. And of course, what must she look like to the people here? A dirty, burned up girl accompanied by the scariest motherfucker in the world.

And really, are they wrong? Rey left Unkar Plutt there to die. She spent her whole life taking orders from a man who kept her fed only enough to sustain her use to him. She deeply hurt one person who loved her the most. 

And this lady thinks that _Kylo_ is the problem?

“It’s a routine question that we ask everyone,” Holdo is saying, her keen eyes on Rey’s face.

“No one is hurting me,” Rey says. “Someone used to but that’s over with now, and it’s never happening again.”

Holdo’s brow goes up. “I’m glad to hear that, Rey. Have you ever talked to anyone about your past experiences? A counselor?”

“No, I haven’t ever, uh, gotten around to it.”

Holdo nods, like this is what she’d been expecting.

“Life gets crazy sometimes, doesn’t it?”

Rey can only nod.

X

When the doctor leaves, promising to return later with a nurse, Kylo slips back into the room, his expression guarded.

"You okay?"

Rey rubs her nose, and her fingers bump against the cannula.

"I really, really hate hospitals."

Kylo sits heavily in the plasticky chair in the corner.

And then, very calmly, he says, “I called my dad. He says LVPD took Plutt to the ER. I don’t know anything other than that. Also, Finn texted to say he’s bringing you a burger.”

Something in her thaws. She's surprised, because every part of her feels so raw and singed that she'd thought there was nothing left unmelted in her whole body.

"Oh, god. I'm going to cry," Rey declares, horrified and amused. Kylo's eyes snap to her face.

"Please don't."

Rey shrugs her shoulders, a sort of hysterical half-laugh threatening to burst up from the well of her chest.

"I think it would be better if I did this here, don't you? That way you don't have to..." and she trails off. Water pools on her lower lash line.

"Rey, please, please don't cry," he groans, and he looks so utterly miserable and pathetic that now she is absolutely, one hundred percent going to lose it.

"I can’t help it, because I’m doing this thing now where I just… feel my feelings as they happen to me, and I gotta say, so far I completely hate it.”

He blinks. There’s the faintest hint of a smile on his face. But he looks down at his hands and lets out a long breath.

“Rey. You should take it easy. The doctor-”

“Kylo, I’m really sorry,” she blurts out. “That’s the truth, okay? I'm just so, so, sorry. I should have told you that I was going to the bar, I should have told you that I was feeling trapped.”

“Yeah, you _should_ have.”

It pours out of her.

"I didn't know how to talk about it. I thought that if, like- if everything was going okay while he was still out there, still alive, then the whole thing was pointless. And I never had a lot, and you wanted me to give some of it up, and it scared the hell out of me."

He shakes his head. “Rey, you were scared the whole time. I think you still are.”

The cold air of the hospital room fills with a soft white noise as the air conditioner kicks in. The feeling of moving air ghosts across her skin.

"I guess, yeah. You're scary,” Rey says.

When he would ask her things or share personal information, it felt like something hard and sturdy coming uncorked in her chest, and a feeling or a thought would just fall out of her, fully formed and not-quite ready to be spoken but alive anyway, fresh from the depths of her. She would barely recognize it when she spoke it into the world, and then just like that, there it would be.

But this time the words feel older, and she recognizes them. She lets them go of her own volition.

Her voice is steady, but her fingers tremble against the bare skin of her knee.

“You wanted me to do things that I didn’t know how to do. I didn’t know how to believe you when you promised me that it was going to be better, that I was good. I just couldn’t.”

His face twists and she hates that she’s hurting him.

He says, “Why not?”

Rey braces herself.

“Everything was getting so good that I didn’t think I had a hope in hell of ever keeping it. And I thought that if I couldn’t hold onto it, I might as well just...drop it.”

Kylo closes his eyes and inhales sharply.

"That's so shitty," he says.

"I know," Rey says, half hating herself and half on the verge of tears because it feels honest and true to tell him this. "I was thinking of myself. I wasn't thinking about you."

Another of those long, awful silences. And it's her responsibility to fill it, if she ever wants to fix this. And god, does she want to fix it.

"Believe me when I tell you that I'm so, so sorry," she murmurs. "But I want to live. I want to have the chance of a life again. With you. And if I can get that chance back, it won't be like before."

"Rey, please," he says, eyes still closed, his body tense and unmoving. It feels so terribly, terribly final. The moments right before a sunset. The slight buzz and flicker of an incandescent bulb with a dying filament.

A voice in her head is screaming at her to cut her losses, to pull back now before she makes even more of a fool of herself, but she _has_ to get this out.

"And I know this is terrible timing, but I love you too. And I feel so…so lame for never telling you that before now, but it’s true and I want to protect it, and cherish my life and yours, and...” she trails off, because the ground is falling away under her feet and _nothing_ is catching her.

He turns away from her, and for one awful second she thinks he's going to just leave. But he just crosses to the corner and picks up her jacket from the pile of her clothes on the chair. He walks back to her, his eyes fixed on the scorched leather he’s gripping.

"Put this on," he says, offering it to her.

She takes it gingerly. The whole thing is scorched with black char. His eyes trace the lines in the leather as she shrugs it onto her shoulders.

Rey brushes a hand across the black streaks.

"I like it like this," Ren murmurs.

"Me too."

The air conditioner cuts off, and the room is suddenly way too quiet.

Her heart is in her throat.

"Rey, look," he sighs.

The door to the room opens and then Finn is standing in the doorway, his brow furrowed and a white paper bag in one hand. One step, two steps, three steps, and then he has his arms wrapped around her.

"You're okay," Finn says into her shoulder.

"Sorry, I'm sorry, I'm so sorry," Rey says. And by the end, it's really just a sob.

Over Finn’s shoulder Kylo gives her a look that is not quite soft, but not cold either. She closes her eyes and starts feel the ground underneath her again.

X

When they get back to his house, it’s still dark out. All the lights are off, and he makes for the stairs. She stands there in the foyer, looking at the blinking white box of his house.

From where he stands halfway up the steps, he says, “I’m going to shower.”

“Okay,” Rey says quietly. The house feels suddenly foreign, like she’s been gone for years instead of hours.

“You still gonna be here when I’m done?” he says.

Rey winces. “Guess I earned that one. Yeah, I’ll be here. If that’s okay-”

“It’s okay,” he says.

“Thank you,” Rey says, and _means_ it. He looks at her for one long heartbeat, and then walks up the stairs.

X

The house is pristine.

Someone (Finn) has cleaned up after the party, and Rey walks slowly into the kitchen, perching on the edge of her usual counter with a glass of water. Above her, she can hear the shower running.

Beyond the shining surface of the kitchen, the white smoothness of his living room spreads out gleaming and perfect, stopping only when it runs into the huge glass wall that looks out onto the desert. It’s nearly dawn, and the horizon is tinged with pink.

She takes a long drink of the cold water and feels it soothing her ragged throat. They gave her an inhaler at the hospital, but it’s in her coat pocket with her switchblade, and she can’t look at either of those things right now.  

She closes her eyes and sits in the cool dark like that for a long time. Until she hears the water cut off, and she’s officially out of time.

X

She hesitates outside his door. It feels weird to knock; this used to be her door, too.

But she does anyway.

“Yeah?” he says.

“Can I sleep here tonight?” she says, fingers twitching at her sides.

“Come in,” is all he says.

She turns the handle and takes two steps into the room before coming to a dead halt.

He’s shirtless, because of course he is, his hair damp around his ears as he wraps towel around his neck. She feels her mouth go dry just looking at him, because it turns out her hormones haven’t gotten the memo that he’s angry at her.

“Um, hey,” she mumbles.

His voice is soft. “Feels like we’ve done this before.”

“Yeah?” Her brain is slow to catch up. She blames the smoke inhalation.

“Yeah. Me shirtless, you standing in front of me. Both of us scared shitless.”

“I liked you even then,” Rey says.

“I wish you’d said something,” he says.

“Me too.”

He runs a hand through his hair. “Yeah, you can stay.”

“I don’t have to. I can leave,” Rey insists, and for the first time, it’s not because she needs him to know that she could, but that she would if he asked.

He shakes his head. “No, stay. I’d feel better if you did.’

Rey lets out a long breath.

“Thanks.”

She turns to leave, but he takes a purposeful step forward. “I meant stay _here_ , Rey.”

Rey gestures at the bed, one brow raising.

He rolls his eyes. “I’m not going to fucking banish you because we’re fighting,” he says. And crosses his arms. The gesture is so familiar, so _him,_ that she could almost cry.

She walks to the bed and all but falls into it, crawling over to her side like she’s scared he’s going to change his mind or something. Kylo falls heavily into bed beside her and flicks the lights off and they both just lay there in the dark for a minute.

Finally, he says, “Hey. Are you okay?”

It takes her a minute before she can think of anything to say. Turns out, she’s not good at answering a straight question with a straight answer.

“No, I’m...not. But I could be worse,” she decides.

“Yeah,” he murmurs. “Can I ask you something?”

“Yeah, of course.”

“Why didn’t you do it? That was your whole… thing.” He rolls onto his back and runs a hand through his hair. Rey shifts onto her side and looks at the angle of his jaw in the moonlight, remembering what it felt like to stand over Unkar Plutt and feel pity and horror instead of the the freedom she’d been expecting.

In the end, the only thing she can say for certain is, “I was expecting it to make me feel good. It didn’t.”

“You don’t have much experience with good.” He reaches out and brushes her hair back from her temple, and Rey remembers, in a flash of light and sound, a barrage of beautiful memories. Arms around her, the roar of bike engines, a slow dance, brilliant sunsets, every single can of ginger ale-

“I do, though. I know what good is like,” Rey murmurs. Very slowly, she reaches out for him too, brushing his hair back just the same way he did.

“Jesus,” he says, and for the first time ever it sounds like he might actually be _praying._

Another of those heavy silences falls, and she has no idea what to say. She feels almost ridiculously uncertain.  

She’s  _trying,_ god damn it. 

He says, “I don’t know what we should do. I won’t be the thing holding you back, babe.”

The words are careful and soft.

She panics. “I’m the problem, it was always my problem-”

“It wasn’t, though. I thought I could kind of… throw you into a life you weren’t ready for. I was always so focused on holding myself back, but when I got you where I thought you’d be safe, I lost sight of you.”

“I ran away-”

“Christ, Rey, it’s not your fault people were trying to kill you. It’s not your fault you had such a shitty childhood. None of that is your fault.”

Rey’s throat is dry. “I don’t want to be someone who needs a near death experience to grow as a person.”

Kylo rubs his jaw and stares up at the skylight. She studies the play of emotions moving across his face, barely breathing until he seems to settle on something.

His voice is very low. “I think you need to finally get on that bus, sweetheart.”

She’s so startled that she almost doesn’t register when he reaches for her hand and takes it in his, warm and steady.

Her panic leaks into her voice. “No, I’m not running away anymore.”

“You’re not going to be happy until you experience what you wanted to see. If we just… pick up where we left off, I think this might happen again.”

Rey closes her eyes and squeezes his hand, because fuck, she doesn’t like the feeling creeping into the back of her brain. It’s a quiet thought plucking on her sleeve, telling her that what he’s saying isn’t new. That she knew it all along.

He says, “This won’t be the last time things go to shit, and if we’re going to have a life together, you need to be sure that got your damn dream. Hell, Rey, you _can_. Your map-”

“Don’t,” Rey mutters, feeling kind of stupid about that whole thing now. “Don’t bring that into it.”

“It was your dream. You owe it to yourself to live it, if you want us to have any kind of a shot at this.”

“This is the weirdest way to break up with someone I’ve ever heard,” Rey says.

“It’s not… fuck it, call it a negotiation.”

Rey’s heart skitters in her chest and she opens her eyes. His expression is molten, focused and determined.

“A negotiation?” Rey says, feeling hope battling against the fear.

“Look, the timing was bad, but I meant what I said when I pulled you out of that fire. And I’m fucking at you pissed, too, but those two things can coexist.”

“I’m going to cry again,” Rey says miserably.

“Rey.”

“I know, I know,” she mumbles, brushing a tear away. “But for the record, I’m not a crier. This doesn’t make me the type of person who cries.”

“Okay,” he says softly. Because he’s generous.

Even when it’s painful, fighting with him is better than leaving him.

There’s a long silence where Rey allows herself to consider the idea that Kylo Ren is right about this. That walking out of the darkness requires you to walk into the unknown, and that this is part of what living is like.

A kind of terrified, elated half-hope grows in her chest like a candle flaring into soft, flickering light. It feels _nice._ And terrifying, because this… was not the plan. This was not what she thought was going to happen.

The future in her mind spreads out before her, an uncharted landscape with no names or labels or roads or...anything. It’s just wide open. And huge.

“I wonder where I’ll…go,” she mutters.

His voice hitches. “Yeah, me too.”

 _Fuck it,_ she thinks, and crawls across the mere foot of space between them until her body is pressed against his, her head tucked under his chin. His arms go around her and he presses his cheek into her hair. She rests a hand on his neck and runs her thumb across his collarbone, closing her eyes.

They lay there in total stillness, two bodies at the end of a charred, beloved rope.

“I’m sorry,” Rey says again, for the tenth time, for the first time.

His fingers twitch on her skin and his voice is heated. “I want you to come back, even if it’s just to finish this fucking argument. You have to come back _._ ”

Rey nods. “I’ll come back. I will. If you’ll… have me.”

He doesn’t say anything. His hand smooths up the length of her body and comes to cup her cheek. Her breath catches, and she arches her back to look up into his eyes.

“Just come back,” he says.

And if they haven’t said everything, they have apparently said enough, because he kisses her. He kisses her and she kisses him back with her chapped lips and her aching heart and her red fingers digging into his hair. He flips her onto her back and she doesn’t spare a thought for the old burns or the new ones as she tugs her sweater off her head, doesn’t think about the past or the future or anything but his hands. It’s how they’ve always done it.

His shirt comes off and she’s fumbling with his belt, and if it’s not good, well—

He sinks into her, and it _feels_ good. Slow and appreciative, like they’ve never met before and this is the first time.

“I love you,” she sobs.

“ _Rey_ ,” he groans.

He drags it out like they have all the time in the world.

And maybe they do.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> For the record, I love happy endings and this story will have one! One more chapter and possibly an epilogue :D
> 
> I am cheerfully in the debt of[ AmyZini](http://archiveofourown.org/users/amyzini) for her incredible beta skills (seriously) and to my dear friend[ lifeofsnark](https://archiveofourown.org/users/lifeofsnark) for her generosity and peptalks. 
> 
> I hang out on [Tumblr](https://violetwilson.tumblr.com/) and now also on [Twitter!](https://twitter.com/ViWiWrites)
> 
> If you're enjoying my work, please consider leaving a comment or kudos! It's very encouraging.


	19. Postcards from the Edge

**Ch. 19**

**Postcards from the Edge.**

Three weeks have passed, and Kylo Ren sits in his father’s living room holding a lukewarm beer. Han grips his own beer, dark circles rimming his amber colored eyes, as Kylo slumps deeper into the couch.

Han says, “The whole place went up like a match.”

“I know, dad. I was there.”

He needs some fucking sleep. There are two missed calls on his phone from Poe, and his father is looking at him like he thinks there’s a non-zero chance he’s going to break his coffee table in half.

Ren forces himself to sit up, every muscle in his body protesting.

“Thanks for looking into it,” Ren says, his voice raspy. Fuck it, it’s his own fault. Fucking stupid. Between the work and the sleep deprivation he’s a poster boy for everything he ever tried to get Poe and Finn to avoid.

Han leans back in his armchair, and for a second he looks just like he always did when Ren would ask him for advice as a kid.

“Different county,” Han points out. “Not much I can do. I’m sorry, kid.”

Ren arches a brow. “You shouldn’t be doing anything anyway. Not your case. You’re supposed to be retired.”

Han scoffs. “At least I’m was on the force. You’re a civilian.”

There’s a long pause.

“You call her yet?” Han says.

Ren scowls at the floor. “No.”

“She call you?”

“Couple times.”

“She say whether or not she’s coming back?”

Ren grips the chair. “I have to go, dad.”

But he doesn’t. There’s a long ass pause, the kind his mother would usually interrupt.

But this time it’s just the two of them, and Han’s finally the one to say it.

“You scared to tell her he’s dead?”

There was probably a time when Kylo would give his dad shit for implying he was scared of anything. But Kylo Ren is currently six days post Rey permanently fucking his head up, and suddenly that kind of joke just doesn’t seem funny.

“Yeah,” he says.  

Han and Ren lift their glasses and drink at the same time, neither of them saying anything.

* * *

Rey stands at the edge of the road with her eyes closed, counting the spaces between heartbeats. It’s a trick she’d picked up from this weird hippy in Flagstaff who’d bought her a sandwich when he’d noticed her crying.

Accepting that particular act of charity wasn’t one of Rey’s prouder moments, but god damn if that tuna sandwich hadn’t been the best thing she’d ever tasted.

As she ate, he said, “The trick is to focus on slowing down your heartbeats.”

She’d scowled at him and pointed out the impossibility of that.

He’d smiled at her and said that was the whole point of the exercise, which made zero sense at the time or at any point since, but she’s been trying it anyway. She focuses on each fierce contraction of her heart and feels the space between each one until she can almost imagine that she and that heartbeat are the only two things in the universe. And it makes her feel better, a little.

It does.

That’s the thing about leaving him. About leaving everything.

Even if she isn’t far from where she’d come from, every new thing, every new face, feels like seeing a fresh act of creation born shiny and new. Drifters at the bus station, people in cars with open windows and loud music blaring through the speakers, kids selling sodas on the street, ticket agents with bored eyes.

They all feel new and different. And weird. Just, hugely weird.

In one sense, every day has been a weird kind of pain, like she’s discovering parts of her body she never knew existed and all of them ache. And others, the ones that come when she sees people who look like him, or motorcycles, or the moon, or leather jackets, or dark heads bent intently over something, hurt like a little wound. Sometimes she has to stop what she’s doing and just sit the hell down, because everything goes black around the edges as she feels the ghost of that loss.

Then she counts her heart beats for a while until she’s sure that they will not, in fact, quit coming, and reminds herself that she has work to do before she can go home.

And then someone in line behind her offers her a cigarette or asks for change or tells her that the next window is open, and she returns to her own body, wounded and a little surprised by the whole experience, and life goes on.

She makes friends, kind of. A round eyed woman with frizzy hair teaches her to French braid. She pets some dogs, falls into conversations with a few bus drivers. It’s not groundbreaking, but no one looks at her like she’s dangerous. Everyone has their own shit going on, and it’s comforting to be reminded just how tiny she is in the grand scheme of things. After weeks of being at the center of a tiny, violent little drama, being around all these people feels like someone’s opened a door in her brain and let some sunlight in.

A month passes like that, and Rey waits for some vital spark of understanding or clarity to hit, some giant fireball of enlightenment to tell her what the whole thing actually meant. She doesn’t stop wanting the answer to arrive, but she gets a little less disappointed each time a sunrise doesn’t illuminate an epiphany hiding in the gutter.

But the guilt comes, too, and with a little distance and a little time it becomes easier to face.

When she calls Phasma, she picks up on the second ring.

“Wow, a call from my favorite fire hazard. What do you need?” Phas says, not sounding all that pleased to hear from her. Which….is fair.

Rey blurts it out.

“I’m sorry I came to the Scavenger when I was such a risk. I shouldn’t have been there that night. It was stupid, I knew better, and I’m sorry.”

There’s a beat of silence. Finally, Phas sighs. “Not like you lit it on fire.”

“But I brought it down on you,” Rey says.

Phas lets out a long sigh, and Rey’s _sure_ she’s going to hang up. Rey wouldn’t really blame her.

But she doesn’t.

“You know what I liked about that bar? Nobody asked too many questions. Baggage checked at the door.”

“Until mine burned the place down.”

Phas’ voice takes on the cut-the-bullshit tone she uses on flaky servers, and it makes her feel homesick.

“Look. It’s not your fault you had a shit childhood, but you don’t have the kind of baggage you can check at the door. You’re gonna carry it around with you, and you have to deal with that. Which sucks, but there it is.”

“I know. I have an appointment with a therapist in a few weeks. When I get back to town.”

“That’s good. Shit like that will eat you alive if you don’t deal with it.”

“I know,” Rey breathes. “You’re right.”

Phas’ voice softens. “You got us out, too, you know. I don’t forget that. You saved our asses, even if your shit got us there in the first place. Call it a draw.”

“But it’s _not_ a draw,” Rey objects. It’s not even close.

“Yeah, but I’m calling it one. Call it a... goodbye present.”

Rey closes her eyes.

“Phas…Thanks for everything.”

There’s a beat of silence. “See you around, Rey.”

Then she hangs up.

Rey looks at the sky and feels so, so lucky.

* * *

 

Kylo stares at a crime map of Flagstaff. It’s an offline copy and about two years old at this point, but it’s still more accurate than the online version. Flagstaff PD’s slow about that kind of thing.

He runs over all the major neighborhoods, identifying each and every corner where he’s praying she’s _not._ Dark patches of color swim in front of his vision, and for a second it feels like he’s falling into a world that’s exclusively red danger and tan scrubland.  

At the sound of a cough, Ren looks up. Hux is standing there, pristine in his button down and holding a donut and a cup of coffee.

“You look like shit,” he informs him.

Ren doesn’t say anything, because what the fuck is he supposed to say?

Across the room, Poe and Finn are looking at him with a mirrored set of concerned expressions on their faces. Apparently, he’s not doing a great job pretending like this isn’t affecting him. Christ, are they going to have to talk about this? It cannot be overstated how much he doesn’t want to talk about this.

“I’m tired,” he manages.

Hux exhales sharply, grips his cup a little tighter, and says, “Then take an Ambien like a normal person.”

“Did you need something?” Ren snaps.

Hux purses his lips and looks down at his donut. And then, with a dramatic sigh, he gives Ren a pitying look and sets it down on his desk before marching to his own office.

Fantastic, now even Hux thinks he’s a charity case.

Ren shuts the door and pulls his phone out, staring at the letters of her name until they stop looking like words and start looking like strange, alien symbols. For one second he can almost imagine that he’s never seen it before.

Then his eyes refocus and it’s her again. It’s always fucking _Rey._

He taps the button on his voicemail again. The message is brief.

“Hey, um, not sure if you still don’t want to talk to me, but I wanted to tell you that I’m in Flagstaff, but I’m going to Phoenix this afternoon. Thought I might start telling you my plans, you know...”

There’s a long silence, and then she starts again. “Sorry, I’ll- I’ll just end this before I embarrass myself, but I miss you. Call me, uh, if you want.”

He pulls the Flagstaff postcard out again, checking to make sure Finn and Poe aren’t watching. The postcard is one of those old-fashioned kinds with big arching text and a different landmark inside each letter. In one corner, a cowboy lassos looping text that says, “Greetings from Beautiful-”

He plays Rey’s message again as he flips the card over and reads her choppy, fucked up handwriting.

_Hey. This bus station smells like beer. You would like it. I’m still sorry, and I still love you. –Rey._

He picks up the donut and takes a bite, flipping the card over again and again as the sweet taste dissolves on his tongue.

It tastes like strawberries.

X

At night, Kylo dreams about her.

This isn’t a new thing; he used to dream about her a lot. Kissing her, fucking her, holding her. But he’s had nightmares about her for nearly a week, and it’s getting fucking ridiculous.

She fades to black over and over in his head, and he wakes up alone with his hands gripping her pillow in a way that would have sent her screeching like a hellcat if she’d been asleep next to him. She would roll her eyes at him and say something like, _if I was gonna die, I’d already be dead._

Tonight, for the first time he doesn’t automatically reach for her, just throws the white sheet off his overheated body and leans heavily back on his headboard to look up at the moon overhead through the skylight.

He reaches for his phone, but instead of playing the message, he dials her number.

It rings and rings, and he’s trying to think of something to say on her voicemail as his anxiety finally wakes him all the way up, but he just needs to talk to her right fucking now and she’s not answering-

And then she does.

“Hey, one second,” she whispers.

Her breath is labored, like she’s been running.

His whole body goes tense, his brain filling with about eight million possibilities of things she could be doing that would prevent her from answering the phone. Being abducted. Riding cross country with a trucker. Joining some kind of cult.

“Okay, I’m here,” she says, and her voice is normal again. “So sorry, I was in a movie.”

He feels like a dumbass for overreacting.

“What movie?”

“There was a midnight showing of Blade Runner.” He can hear the sound of cars passing in the background. “I always wanted to see it.”

“The old one?” He says.

“Yeah.” Rey hesitates. “I thought you… wouldn’t want to talk to me for a while. I shouldn’t have called you before, I’m sorry-”

His voice is ragged. “I changed my fucking mind, okay?”

“Okay,” Rey says quickly. “Yeah, that’s- Jesus, it’s really good to hear from you. I’ve been thinking about you, like, constantly.”

“You’re in Phoenix?”

It’s barely a question. He’s just hurling words into the universe.

“Just got in today. There’s a university here.”

He lets her words roll over him. Of course she’s okay. It feels like something in his chest is being drained of fluids very slowly.

“College. Good plan.”

“Yeah. I’m trying to...be better,” she says, sounding a little embarrassed.

He considers a handful of things he wishes he could tell her. That he’s still mad at her, that he misses her, that his life feels ten shades less vivid without her in it. That none of this is quite right.

“I’m trying out meditation,” she interjects.

He lets out a short laugh, his first one in a while.

“Does that help?”

“A little, but then I end up thinking about that night when we...when I did that stuff. I never thanked you enough... for that.”

“No, you didn’t.”

“Thank you,” she whispers. “Thank you, thank you. I don’t think I’d be alive without you.”

There’s a few seconds of silence, and he imagines her as he remembers her. In ratty shoes with thoughtful, clever expression on her freckled face. She would smile up at him, a light flashing in her eyes, and he would feel like the king of the goddamn universe just knowing that for one person in the entire world, he was doing something good and right.

Her voice is soft. “You know, sometimes I think about the past two months and my head sort of spins.”

He closes his eyes and leans his head back.

“You did good work.”

“You did that,” she interjects. “I...didn’t do much to help.”

He can’t engage with that. Not yet. “When are you getting to the Canyon?”

_When are you coming back?_

Her voice hitches. “I’m not sure. I’m stalling, I think. Scared it won’t be...”

“It will be,” he says, just a little too loud, a little too rough.

She doesn’t seem to mind.

“That... makes me feel a lot better. You’re usually right about stuff.” And then, gently, “I miss you.”

He can’t touch that one, either. Can’t go there. Everything shuts down again.

“Are you safe?”

“Yes,” she says quickly. “I’m staying-”

“Don’t tell me,” he says. “If you do, I’ll come there and get you.”

Her voice is soft. “Kylo, I’m-”

He hangs up.

* * *

Rey goes to the university and walks into the geology department. Students are staring down the barrels of microscopes, eating bagels, drinking coffee, and looking very tired. She even sits in on a class, because the admin lady at the front at the front desk said no one would mind.

She listens to the professor talk about fault lines, and it all sounds very, very familiar.

Later, Rey leans against a warm brick wall, the sun on her face and a cup of hot coffee in her hand.  

“So…” Finn is saying.

Is it possible for someone to sound older after four weeks? He _sounds_ older.

“Finn. It’s okay. You can just tell me.”

She kind of guessed. Plutt’s specific addictions never added up to anything but terminal.

His voice is thin. “He was in intensive care for about two weeks. Never regained consciousness. Kidney failure, I guess.”

Rey closes her eyes. “Ah. Christ.”

“I can’t imagine the oxy helped, but for what it’s worth, he was already dying. Kylo asked me to tell you. Thought it might be easier coming from…a friend.”

Rey blows out her breath and takes a sip of her lukewarm tea, trying to decide how to feel, what to say.

“Was anyone with him?”

She doesn’t mean to ask it, but there it is.

Finn’s voice is so, so gentle. “Ah... no.”

Rey’s grip on the cup strengthens.

“God. What a sad, sad story,” she mutters.

There’s a twisting feeling in her gut, but it’s not quite guilt. Not for him, anyway. At this point, she knows what every single facet of guilt feels like, and this isn’t that. It’s maybe just pain. General, all-purpose pain.

“He had it coming,” Finn adds, voice hard. “I know that’s awful to say, and I know he was your foster dad, but he was a piece of work, and I’m glad you don’t have to worry about him.”

Rey isn’t sure what to think about Plutt’s death. There’s grief, that’s for damn sure, but there’s relief, too. And then guilt about the relief. And then confusion. And so on, and so on.

“And for the record, I’m proud of you. Kylo told me what happened between you and Plutt, and I think you did the right thing.”

“Finn,” Rey says, feeling something turn to butter just south of her heart.  

“It’s the truth,” Finn insists.

“I love you, Finn,” Rey says fiercely.  

“You too, peanut,” Finn says. “Are you… holding up okay?”

Rey thinks for a second.

“I feel about eight thousand different things every minute, and I cry all the time. I saw a paper bag caught on a tree branch yesterday and just burst into tears,” Rey says, grimly amused at the memory. “But even with that, it’s okay. I’m okay. I didn’t know if I would be, but I am.”

“And do you like Arizona?” Finn asks.

Rey smiles. “It’s artier than Nevada, which kind of surprised me. But I like it.”

“You gonna stay?”

His voice is hesitant, and she can hear him forcing himself to sound positive.

The answer is instant. “No. No, I’m doing my trip and I’m coming home.”

“Really?”

“Yeah. Whatever I end up doing, I can’t… leave things in Vegas unfinished. I’m not done yet,” she says. “I want to make things as right as I can.”

“Good. We miss you like hell around here. Nothing’s been the same since you left.”

Rey forces herself to inhale and exhale so she doesn’t fall into the pit of grief and shame and everything else. There’s more to say here.

“Hey, Finn? I’m sorry I asked you to lie to Kylo about me going to the bar. It was shitty of me to put you in the middle like that.”

“I’m terrible at lying, so I couldn’t have pulled it off anyway,” he laughs. And then, more seriously, “But thanks, Rey. I forgive you.”

Rey breathes again, surprised all over again by how good it feels to apologize for something. Making things right again comes with a near full-body high, apparently.

“Um, Finn?” Is it really as simple as just…asking? God, it all feels so middle school. She counts two heartbeats. “How is he?”

Finn hesitates, and Rey’s heart sinks.

“He’s alright. Ish. He works constantly.”

Rey runs a thumb over the cardboard sleeve of her drink, thinking of the guy with the sharp eyes and the straight back she’d met that first night at the Scavenger.  

“He’s not like…prowling the streets?”

Finn almost laughs. “No more than usual. But I don’t think he’s sleeping, really.”

Rey remembers what he’d told her in his parents’ house.

_I can’t sleep, Rey._

“He never does when he’s anxious,” Rey rasps, her heart twisting.

* * *

Kylo digs his boot into gravel of the Scavenger’s parking lot, squinting his eyes against the red sky of the setting sun. He’s wearing his jacket even though it’s fucking hot, and he and Poe have been standing there for ten minutes in silence, looking at the wreckage in the evening light.

Sunset.

The Scavenger’s rubble has been largely cleared away, leaving only blackened chunks of cement and wood that’ll be picked up tomorrow. And then there’ll just be the gravel parking lot, an uneven patch of ground, and handful of memories.

Poe’s voice is quiet. “Phas decided not to rebuild.”

Ren’s hand twitches at his side.

“Yeah?”

“More trouble than it’s worth, she said. Some developer wants the land. Condos or something.”

There’s a long silence as Ren tries to imagine a world without the Scavenger Bar and Grill. A month ago, he would have had no trouble. Now, it feels sort of unreal, like someone asked him to imagine Vegas without the neon lights, or the desert without sand. It’s just become part of the landscape of his life.

“I guess it’s for the best,” Ren mutters.

Poe nods. “Yeah. God, what a dumpster fire of an establishment. I’m gonna miss it.”

Ren runs a hand through his hair and tries to clear the hangover feeling that’s been hanging around his head for the past week.

Poe looks like he wants to say something else, and Ren braces himself for the inevitable question, mentally shaking out an answer. _Yeah, I’m fine. I’ve been keeping busy. Thanks._

It’s not that he thinks he’s fooling anyone. It’s just that he doesn’t want to talk about it, doesn’t want to admit that he all but sent her away and every day that passes he regrets it more and more. Christ, if he admits that, then what? Head to Phoenix or wherever the fuck she is right now? And then what?

But Poe just says, “Want to come out with me and Finn tonight? We were thinking of checking out this new place-”

“No,” he says. “No. I’m- I’m good.”

“Okay,” Poe says easily, his posture unchanged. And then, “You look like shit, dude.”

“Dude?” Ren quotes, giving Poe an unrestrained side glare. Poe snorts, but there’s more humor in it this time.

“I’ve been spending too much time with Finn,” Poe says. “But seriously, I know this has to be…shitty, for you.”

Ren closes his eyes and blows out a long breath and then decides that, you know what, fuck it, he can’t keep this one close to the belt anymore. And even if he could, what’s the point?

“Yeah, I’m pretty fucking miserable about it,” Ren mutters.  

“Seems like it,” Poe agrees. And there’s no pity in it, because Poe’s a good friend. Kylo lets out a long breath, feeling marginally less awful.

Ren reaches into his back pocket and pulls out the latest postcard. _Welcome to Phoenix, Arizona_ , it says. He flips it over, even though he has it memorized by now.

_Friday, Maricopa Point, sunrise. (I’ll be the girl in the leather jacket)_

He hands the card wordlessly to Poe, who reads it and lets out a whistle.

“Damn.” Poe says, "You gonna go?"

He pulls it out of Poe’s hands and pockets it carefully.

"I don't want to feel like I'm going to drag her back home or some shit."

"She invited you."

"I made this whole thing about her following her dreams," he snaps. "And now all I want is to take the whole thing back and just... it's like I'm admitting defeat if I go."

Poe snorts. "Dude. That happened like, the day you fell in love with the one girl with too much of her own shit to be scared off by yours."

"Don’t be a dick.”

Ren crosses his arms, and Poe draws in a deep breath.

“You wanted to be king of the universe. And for the record, if anyone could do it, it would be you. But you found the one person who made that damn near impossible, and now you can’t undo it.”

Ren grunts, feeling… not angry, just kind of tired.

“Fuck you,” Ren murmurs. “She ran away.”

Poe shrugs. “She did what she knew how. So did you. I guess that now you have to ask yourself if she’s learned something else, and I don’t think you can really do that unless you talk to her. Plus, if there was ever a time for a big moment, this is _it_. Worst that happens is you get there and change your mind. Or you two have a big blow out fight in a national park. Might make a nice change.”

Kylo blows out a long breath. “God, I hate it when you’re right.”

Poe levels Ren with a shit-eating grin.

“It’s my curse,” Poe says, shrugging.

Ren reaches out and shoves Poe’s shoulder. Hard. Poe laughs and shoves him back, and Kylo cracks his first real smile in a week.

It’s a few hours ride to the Grand Canyon. He can leave tonight.

He walks to his bike, feeling the world sort itself into some sort of meaningful order again. A plan forms in his mind. It starts with gassing his bike and ends with Rey. After that… who the hell knows.

“You know, all this is your fault,” Ren says casually, turning back to his bike to double check his saddle bags. He’ll need gas, water, and cash.

Poe’s boots crunch on the gravel. “I love you too, dumbass.”

* * *

Rey hikes to Maricopa point by herself.

She leaves her crummy little motel room a few hours before dawn, catches the bus that gets her as close to the point as she can, and then treks the rest of the way on foot. There’s a path, so it’s not hard, but with her ratty sneakers and Jansport slung low on her back, she’s ill-suited for the elements. Hasn’t stopped her from hiking a few different runs around here, though. She’s saved Maricopa for last.

It’s cold still, the sun waiting for her below the horizon, the air motionless for a while.

It’s a little over an hour’s hike from the drop off point to the canyon, and Rey has plenty of time to draw in the sight of the canyon as she walks the road up to Maricopa. In the pre-dawn light, the canyon is bathed in blue light, the bottom of the canyon a shadowy abyss not yet touched by the faint pinkening of the horizon. The Colorado River, slow and sinuous on its winding path through the rock, is just a suggestion of silver.

The park is nearly silent, except for the wind that blows for miles and miles, fresh and clean and tumbled into deep gorges and rocky recesses that make the air taste just faintly like the earth.

Rey likes it.

She knows exactly what she’ll find when she finally sees it for herself: a great turn of the river at her feet, and nearly three hundred degrees of rust-red canyon views from Maricopa’s rocky promontory.

She’s been here a hundred times, but today she gets to see it.

Hiking there has the same unreal, dream-like quality that of the past month of her life. Everything, absolutely everything has felt oversaturated and painful, like a band aid constantly being ripped off, only to reveal another, even more tightly adhered one underneath.

Rey reaches the pathway that veers off to Maricopa and listens to the trembling silence for a minute, full of fear. She can feel the sun, see the brightening of the horizon through the scrubby trees that block her view.

She can do this. She can do this.

Rey checks her watch. Six minutes till dawn.

Slipping her backpack off one shoulder, she rummages around for her water bottle and takes a long, greedy gulp, because you can’t fuck around with dehydration in the desert. She’d nearly passed out yesterday when she went hiking at Supai, which was especially dumb since she’d been hiking alone.

It had hurt her pride to ask another hiker for some of their water, but she’d done it, because she’s trying to be a responsible goddamned human being, and it turns out there’s a steep learning curve to that sort of thing.

Also, Dr. Holdo was _not_ kidding about smoke inhalation. Her throat was raw for nearly ten days after she left, so she savors how easily she can chew and swallow now.

Tiny victories.

Rey caps her bottle and shoves it back in her backpack, knowing that she’s officially out of time to stall.

Rey takes a deep breath, squares her shoulders, and walks alone down the path. It’s a narrow walkway that juts out into the canyon, the earth slipping away on either side until she feels like she’s falling into the view.

She walks and walks until she runs into the furthest edge, the metal railing cold on her hip bones and her hands gripping the railing as she stares and stares.

There it is.

The Grand Canyon.

A near Martian landscape rock rises up into points and falls away into deep grooves, baked rust- red by nearly six million years of exposure to the sun. It’s so beautiful. Her feet hurt, her heart hurts, her eyes are burning with unshed tears as she stands there counting heartbeats, and it is so beautiful.

When she hears the sound of a motorcycle, her heart skitters in her chest. She turns around, staring down the winding path that leads from the road to the point, searching for a scrap of black through the scrubby trees.

The sound gets louder. The hope in her chest grows louder with it, and the fear, too. It’s a blender whirl of anxiety and hope and love. Then the engine noise cuts off, there’s a pause, Rey turns around to look down the path and there he is. Tall and broad, just like always, and striding down the gravel path in his usual black jacket and thick-soled boots. There's that same neutral expression that just verges on a scowl, the same hands shoved roughly in the same pockets. She could have left him five minutes ago, for all her heart seems to care. She takes a step forward, swallowing down on a breath.

He meets her eyes and the crashing in her head reaches some kind of fever pitch, because he’s here and she’s here and all this is happening, because this is her life now. She’s terrified, yeah, but it also feels like her heart is about to explode, because he drove _four_ hours to get to her.

Then he’s right in front of her, his dark eyes on hers. He comes to a stop.

If he only came here to break up with her, she would still feel lucky.

His jaw works. "Hey."

"You came," she blurts.  

"You invited me," he says.

And then for the first time he seems to notice where they are, and his gaze slips past her to the vastness of the canyon. His lips part just faintly and he sucks in a breath as it stretches and bends before them, huge and endless and made of void and sky.

"Fuck," he murmurs. "I get what you meant."

He walks over to the railing, so close to her that she could lean her head on his shoulder.

“I’m so glad you’re here,” she whispers.

He doesn't look away from the landscape, his jaw clenched.

“It feels like you’ve been gone for a long time,” is all he says. There’s a long silence, and for a minute they just stand there, taking the whole thing in. Just being around him makes her feel better.

"I have a whole bunch of things to say," she finally murmurs. “Would you...mind?”

She waits for him to acknowledge it, and finally he does, dipping his head once. His expression is totally unreadable.

"Okay. Thanks,” she mumbles, and then draws in another lungful, grateful for the millionth time that she's finally stopped coughing.

Rey opens her mouth and _tries_.

“When you met me, I was like...barely hanging on. I was scared of everything, I was always thinking about myself. I didn’t have a life, and when you helped me start to build one, I was terrified that I was going to fuck up.”

His face is impassive. “And then you did.”

Rey taps the sole of her shoe into the ground.

“Yeah. I was like, self-destructing, and you were the one who had to pick up the pieces. It was so selfish. And shitty. I want you to know that I’m really grateful to you for everything you did for me. I don’t think I’d be alive without you.”

He cuts in, firmly but gently.

"I was right, wasn't I? About what you needed?"

Pink light filters across his face. Not fire red, not high-noon yellow, but soft, hazy pink.

“Part of me thought that being here, or getting free from Plutt was the end all of everything. I had no plan past this point. I thought this would be enough.”

She comes to a stuttering halt, his eyes pinning her to the earth, the land around them nothing but void and air and static. How can something be so beautiful and so brutal at the same time? It's like Vegas like that, she thinks. A lesson in horrible, stunning contrasts.

He asks, “And is it enough?”

“No. I want more. I have a list, even,” she says, reaching into her back pocket for the crumpled piece of paper. She reads off it. “In order: Get a place to live, get a car, enroll in classes.”

She’s babbling now, eager to tell him these things that have been keeping her up at night.

“Finn said I could stay at his place while I find a new job. I have plenty of serving experience, thought I might get a job closer to Vegas. You can make more in tips in the city, anyway.”

His lips quirk, like maybe he remembers that he was the one who told her that. Back when they first met.

“Is waitressing gonna be enough for you? Long term?”

There’s an easy answer to that one.

“No, I want to be a social worker,” she says. “And I want to travel. Around the country. Maybe further.”

He blinks. “That’s a good idea. That’s a really good plan.”

Rey rubs the back of her neck, which is a little sunburnt, so it stings. “I think my background might actually be helpful to someone. Other kids, you know. I want to do… more.”

Silence falls between them, and Rey remembers the websites she’d read about apologies, and how to give one without being shitty.

Haltingly, she murmurs, “I would really like to hear how you feel. How I made you feel.”

He clenches his jaw for a second, and then it pours out of him, too.

“Christ, Rey, you never let me help you. You needed help, but you felt trapped by it when you got it.”

“You’re right.”

He grips the railing. “I wanted to do things for you. I wanted to fucking fix it, and hell, I _did_. Sort of. I guess I thought, on some level, that if I could take down Plutt, you would be… okay.”

“Yeah,” Rey murmurs. “Me too.”

“And when I finally did, you took a huge risk and nearly died, and even then, you held onto that blind anger until the _last_ possible second.”

“Yeah,” Rey says, wincing. “I did.”

He inhales a deep breath. “But then you… you let him go. You were so brave, you know? Facing him down like that. Being a better person after everything that he fucking did to you. I was so proud of you, even though I was angry about the whole situation. Just pisses me off that kind of shit happens, and how there wasn’t a damn thing I could do about your actual problem. That everyone just has to do their own dirty work.”

He trails off, glowering at the horizon.

“But not alone,” Rey says, staring at every line of his face, trying to memorize it.

“Yeah. Not alone,” he sighs.

“Thank you, for telling me that,” Rey says, wanting to touch him. Wanting to be touched. “What do you want? For the future?”

He glances over at her, a dry smile flitting across his face for just a second.

“Reassess my business model, that’s for one thing,” he says. She can’t tell if he’s joking, but he doesn’t seem angry. “Maybe take more jobs that are…actually helpful to society at large. I’m not opening a charity or anything, but I mean, hell. Not like shutting down one small time guy fixed the system. His supply lines didn’t die. Market’s the same. So I want to look bigger picture. Change the game.”

“If I can ever help, I’d like to. I know the industry,” she adds, and she can’t quite tell if that’s funny or not. He smiles at her, and it’s half-formed but she recognizes it.

“Are you…okay?”

“I don’t think that’s relevant,” she whispers.

“I want to know,” he says.

Rey clears her throat. “I’m okay. I’m scared, but I’m free, and I’m really glad to be here with you.”

“Me too,” he says, just as quietly.

“You’re a good man, Kylo.”

His lips part, and he turns to her, eyes shining.

And for a long moment they just look at the sunrise, feeling everything all at once.

Finally, he says, “You know, I didn’t feel like a real fucking person until I saw you again.”

Rey nods, her heart beating so fast in her chest she can count each beat without even focusing on it.

He frowns in that serious way of his. “I had a long drive over here, and all I came up with is what I _don’t_ want. Like, I don’t want to start over or pretend it never happened or make you do anything. But I do know that I’m not done with us yet. I know that for sure. You…still want to do this?”

All she wants is to fall headfirst into the _hell yes_ at the back of her throat. But she needs to be one thousand percent honest with him.

“I feel like you’re the only thing I’m really, truly scared of losing.I mean, you’re the center of the earth,” she says, feeling awkward and heartsick and hopeful. “I can confidently say I don't feel the need to run off. I wouldn't do that to you. It's so much better when you're around. But I know that I have so much shit to unlearn, and it's going to be messy.

“I never asked you to be perfect,” he says quietly. “I’m not gonna change my mind if you ever make a mistake. You’re allowed to fuck up sometimes, Rey, just don’t lie about it or hide it from me. You have to treat me like I’m a part of your life, now that you finally get to have one.”

He trails off, looking at her with such tenderness and hope in his eyes. It’s the most vulnerable she’s ever seen him.

"But you don't have to be there for that. You really, really don't."

"I know," he says, low and certain. Rey catches her breath. 

"Then... to answer your question, yes. I would really, _really_ like to be with you." 

His smile is slow. “Yeah?”

“Yeah. I mean, if you want to, also,” she says, realizing that he never actually asked her _to_ be with him.

“You proposing to me?”

“Um, yes?”

Christ, she’s blushing.

He smiles and in a throaty voice, says, “Good, because I made you some new keys, and your GED test results came to the house.”

Rey blinks, stunned at the conversational shift.

“Sorry, what?”

“You passed,” he adds, pulling a set of keys out of his pocket.

“No way,” she says, genuinely surprised.

“Opened it myself,” he says, giving her that half-smile.

 “Opening someone’s mail is a federal offense,” Rey whispers, really crying now.

“You can see it when you get back,” he says, and then his grin widens and he pulls her to him. She buries her face into his chest and draws in deep breaths, feeling the warmth and solidity of him. It’s better than any sunrise, better than the Grand Canyon, better than everything.

It’s the best.

“I love you. I’m so, so sorry,” she says, crying and trying to get as much physical contact with him as she can.

“ _Rey_ ,” he murmurs into her hair, rocking them back and forth.

She holds onto him as tightly as she can. Then, without letting go of her, he presses the keyring into her hand and mumbles into her hair.

“Can we get breakfast? Do they have breakfast in Arizona?”

Rey draws in another greedy inhale and laughs out loud.

“Seriously? Breakfast?” Rey says.  

Ren pulls back, disentangling himself slightly to stare down at her. “I swear, you and breakfast. Most important meal of the day, babe.”

He smiles at her, and it feels like someone is shining a flashlight into the dark corners of her chest.

His ability to shift from high intensity situations into bracing, good-tempered normalcy has always stunned her. Pulled her out of herself. Reminded her that life goes on.

“I know a place. It’s kind of on the edge of town, though,” she murmurs, her mind filled with the anticipation of pancakes and coffee and telling him everything that’s happened to her, and hearing everything that’s happened to him.

“That worked out great for me last time,” he says, taking her hand as they step apart. “You ready to go?”

She gives the dawn one last glance, the keys warming in her hands and the pink light reaching her feet. She knows the river will continue to flow. It has millions and millions of years to get there, and she’ll be back sometime to see it again. When they’re both a little further along on their journey.

“Yeah,” she says. “Let’s go.”

“Good. I’ll drive,” he murmurs, wrapping one arm around her shoulders.

As they walk back up the path, Rey unclenches her fingers around the key ring and really looks at it.

“Is this… a raccoon keychain?”

His grin is feral. “So you would always know which set was yours.”

She grins, securing the carabiner onto the belt loop of her jeans so she will never lose them. When she looks back up, he stops walking.  

“Wait, I forgot something,” he murmurs.

Rey tilts her head to one side. “What?”

He leans his head down, tugs her closer, and wraps his hand around the small of her back.

Rey looks straight up at him and meets his kiss halfway.

Forgiveness is not a bandage. It does not erase the past. All it does is connect a before to an indefinable after, and to everything beyond that. It is nothing more, and nothing less, than a bridge.

Which is more, _way_ more, than enough.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I can't believe this is the last chapter. Thank you sincerely for reading my story. I am really, really grateful to all of you who read it. 
> 
> I am especially grateful to the following people: [ Chris,](https://archiveofourown.org/users/lifeofsnark) for reading my shit until it was not shit, and for talking shop, and listening, and being so supportive and NERDY. The incredible [ AmyZini](http://archiveofourown.org/users/amyzini), for her attention to detail, sense of humor, and intelligence. And [ Cait](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Enterprisingly/pseuds/Enterprisingly), for keeping my head on straight (and for falcons.) 
> 
> I hang out on [Tumblr](https://violetwilson.tumblr.com/) and on [Twitter!](https://twitter.com/ViWiWrites) I'd like to post some oneshots/extras/outtakes from this story on there, including the epilogue, if I write one!
> 
> If enjoyed this story, please consider leaving a comment or kudos. It was my sincere pleasure to write it for you.


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